Home electrical help, dead outlets/damage?

Hello all, i'm in need of some home electric advice. My back porch/"Florida room" has had some flakey issues with its outlets, sometimes wouldnt work, by the time i got to checking it out they would be working. Well now they are cold dead as well as the outlet in the master bath and 1 in the garage. Breakers are all on. Popped off my panel cover(Siemens box) and cant help but notice 1 of the hot bars appears blistered while the other looks "normal". Also i see i have aluminum wire for my line in. 

should there be white insulated wired for neutral, ground and hot? Seems off. As far as i know there hasnt been much for hacks messing with the wiring. 

Should i kill the power and pop the breakers off the bars to check the contacts?

the black on these hot leads caught my eye.  

Also worth mentioning the house is a 1992 build. So far looking online im seeing that the anti-ox goo on the ends of the aluminum wire can dry up or go bad and that causes resistance.  So i may be hitting lowes for some new wire goo, sending the wife and kid out(great timing with covid so no stores to kill time in and a thunderstorm/rain so no just playing outside), and i may just kill the main power and try to clean up the bars. Seems simple enough. 

Got some new anti-ox. About to kill the power and check those bar contacts for corrosion and schmeg. 

The white wires on the breakers are connected to 240v circuits. Instead of one hot and one neutral wire in standard 120v circuits, 240v circuits use two hot wires (two 120v lines 180 degrees out of phase= 240v)

"Outlets in bath, garage, and Florida rm not working".

Seems like they could all be on the same GCFI circuit. You may have a tripped or bad GFCI outlet. Typically there will be several outlets daisy chained off of one GFCI outlet. If the GFCI trips all the other outlets down the line will also stop working. 

In reply to old_ :

I concur. In my last house the GFI was on the outlet, but when that tripped it still killed the whole circuit. 

Well heres something, i cleaned and re anti-ox'ed the connections,  flipped her back on and NOW 1 circuit breaker is tripping and the only circuit not on in the house(that i have found) is the same one. So now maybe with clean connections its tripping. Thats a thing. 

Put your panel back together. There is nothing wrong with it. 
 

You have a dead circuit, not a dead panel. 

Use a tester. 
 

If the hot side of every breaker is hot, there is nothing wrong with the panel. 
 

Very likely you have a tripped GFI. It's probably in a bathroom. 
 

Every exterior outlet on my entire house is tied to the GFI in the master bedroom. Same vintage house. 

Its almost like you guys know what your doing.

Why didnt you read this an hour earlier? Ha!

Berk. 

well the good news is i have fresh anti-ox on my aluminum. And i tucked that 1 strand of aluminum back in on my earth ground. 
 

it was the gfci out in the garage that handles the 1 garage plug, master bathroom plug and outlets in the back. Now that i see it it, it is a pretty direct run. And also i now recall a few years ago that my water softener had quit and i found the gfci. Lemme grab a pic so you can see how a person might not be aware of this gfci. 

So this house was built with the air handler in the attic. When the P.O. had the whole system replaced, they put the air handler in the garage below where it had been in the attic like a "normal" house. Meaning this GFCI would be a lot easier to see if there wasnt a air handler and duct work in front of it. And i store my coolers in front of the whole deal too, they dont obstruct the plug, but it does mean your an extra 2' or so away. 

the water softener plug obscures the GFCI buttons which is what i would look for. And yeah, it has a sticker on it but did you really expect me to read something?

ok. Im off to go become a financial forum supporter. Small price to pay for the info and good people in this place. 

glad you got it figured out

Thanks. It could have been avoided had i thought about the plugs probably being GFCI linked, but i demystified the electric panel so thats worth it to me. I gotta add a 220 line for my air compressor/welder soon.

thanks everyone!

In reply to TJL :

Did you re-torque those primary feed lines to the proper torque?

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) 

I put them back to approximately the same torque it took to get them off. Not super smashy tight but snugged then some. 

You could put a GFCI breaker on that circuit, and that would allow you to change out that outlet to a standard duplex outlet.  Might make your life easier the next time it trips.

In reply to rustyvw :

Not a bad idea. Ifs yellowed and is some type i havent seen before so its prob original. 
 

SVreX whats the proper way to tighten those up? You got me curious now. 

In reply to TJL :

Specs vary by manufacturer. Just like cars. 
 

Pretty sure google can help with the specs off that panel box. 

The only reason I brought it up is that in 43 years in construction I have never seen someone take those primaries off to solve a problem like this. 
 

So, you needed to put it back the way it was.  And if they are not torqued properly, the arcing that could develop would be a much bigger problem. 
 

Im not trying to be a worry wort. Just trying to help you get back on track after chasing a unique direction. 

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks. Id say they are a bit tighter than they were if anything and they have a good amount of fresh anti-ox so i assume they should be good. I'll try to look it up and see if there is a torque suggestion available. 

Excellent!  Glad you got it figured out!