What are my options?

[Kimberly]

Hi, I'm relatively new to the group and I've been lurking, looking thru posts for a bit to see if I can find a solution to my Lava Lamp issues.  I have four lamps; two of which are 32oz/16.5 lights.  They both are cheap Chinese lamps (LL brand) and one of them flows beautifully.  Lots of movement, great wax size, no sticking or heating issues.  The other, not so much.  I have looked at tutorials explaining how to refub them and I am okay with doing that if I need to but I wondered if there's anything else I can do in the meantime.  I am at work so I am not able to video it, but I will add that later if it is helpful.

Once I got it shipped to me, I let it warm up to room temperature for a day and then fired it up. It took a few hours, but once it started flowing, I began getting one bubble going up as another is coming down, or just doming with minimal movement at all.  The wax bubbles look larger than they should as well.  I let it go for four or five hours, turned it off and repeated it for another 6-8 hours each day since (including a few 12 hour days on my weekends) and nothing is changing.  I've had the lamp for about two weeks, now and the coil is seated properly.

I started off with a 40W golf ball and after a few days switched to a frosted 40W.  No real change there..I switched back to the 40W clear and then played around with putting aluminum foil as a reflector in the base and that seemed to help somewhat, but it's still very lazy.  

I guess my question is would there be any advantage to trying a higher watt bulb (either a reflector or not) with a dimmer to control the heat to see if I can get any better movement?  Like I said, I don't mind taking it apart to fix it, but I'd rather try other options first.  Again, if a video would be helpful, I can probably get one put together by tomorrow afternoon.

Thank you guys for any assistance!  I love this lamp and would be so psyched to get it moving a little bit more than it is right now.  Thanks again!

[Keith]

Try putting the poor flowing globe on the other base.  Sometimes it can make a difference.

[Kimberly]

That's something I hadn't thought of.  I'll try it tonight.  Thank you!

[Kimberly]

Ok, so I tried switching bases..no change.  In fact, it seemed to be slower than it was before I switched them.  I took a picture and a short video and I will try and upload them so you can see what I am dealing with.  Obviously, it's the lamp on the right (rainbow colored globe) that has the issues.  Again, any ideas would be great!  Thanks again!

[Kimberly]

Here's the photo

[Kimberly]

I can't get the video to upload, but I will try again tomorrow.  Basically, it is just doing pretty much what is in the picture.  Every so often a large bubble will go up but not nearly the action that the red lamp has.