Al wrote:

Wait- Before we shoot down the electrician, you should consider this
may be a problem with a neutral bar, or a bus bar problem, in which
case this WOULD affect the whole problem.

I wasn't sniping at Alex, and after rereading the OP's description of
what he was told, I should have used the words "checkout, cleanup and
tightening" rather than "complete replacement."

I'm hard pressed to think of a problem with a neutral bar that would
affect just one circuit and couldn't be "worked around" by moving that
circuit's neutral wire to another spot on the bar. But I suppose
anything's possible.

I would agree that if the bus bar had a badly burned breaker connecting
blade which was causing the OP's problem, and there were no free slots
left in that box to put another breaker on, that would probably justify
a total box replacement. The time and trouble required to obtain and
install a replacement bus bar, if one could even be found, would
outweigh the cost of replacing the whole box. ('Course if it were me,
I'd probably spend a couple of hours fabricating and brazing a
replacement blade onto the old bus bar. G)

The steps I suggested to the OP are equivalent to "rewiring the box";
i.e. checking for connection problems under every breaker and also
making sure all wire to breaker and wire to neutral bar connections are
socked down tight. I can't think of any other way to "rewire a breaker
box" other than replacing every wiring run in the house, which is pretty
ridiculous in this instance.

Happy Holidays,

Jeff
--

Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"If you can smile when things are going wrong, you've thought of someone
to blame it on."