GFI Outlet Tripping

[sabad66]

Question for the resident beyond electricians.

Situation:
I go to turn on my bathroom light. It turns on for half a second then turns off. I figured the lightbulb was burned out, so I changed that, no luck. Next I go to check the breaker, they are all on. Last thing I do is reset my GFI outlet, and voila, worked again, except it did the same thing and turned off after a quick second.

What I did:
I unplugged my bathroom fan to see if that was the problem, no luck with that, still trips. Next I pulled out the switch itself to see if anything looked weird, also no luck. Last thing I did was pull out the entire GFI outlet (which I'm guessing is about 15 years old by now), and it looks a little dirty, but the connections seem fine.

The weird thing is after I pulled it out and cleaned it up a bit, my light stays on for about 2 seconds now (as opposed to instantly tripping before).

Question:
What do I do? Is it possible that the GFI outlet itself is fucked up? I'm going to go buy a new one and install it to see if that helps, but besides that, is there anything else I can do?

Thanks in advance!

[Cos]

is your breaker on your panel tripping? How old is the wiring? How old is the panel? etc.

[Jim Rome99]

Where do you live? If you're in the NW I can swing by and check it out for you, for free.

[sabad66]

I'm gonna try swapping the outlet first and if that doesn't work I might take you up on your offer. Thanks a lot

[garnet]

first check the connections of the gfci and switch, make sure they are good = clean & tight

poor or loose connections at the gfci can cause it to trip

failing that, replace the gfci, they are prone to failure more so then a simple switch, sometimes they are bad right out of the box new

you'd be surprised how often it's just a poor connection at the root of problems

[sabad66]

Swapped out the gfci outlet for a new one and it worked! Thanks for the suggestions and for the offer to take a look Jim Rome99.