Hi,
I posted a while back about some shop lights that I had that were failing. To
recap, the lights would work fine, one or both of the bulbs would eventually
go out (this is over months/years). Sometimes re-seating the bulb would help,
sometimes a new bulb would work. Eventually, nothing would light in the
fixture (these were 4', 2-T8 fixtures, electronic ballast). None of the ideas
offered seemed to help, so I ended up replacing serval of the fixtures, and
most of the bulbs.
Well, this past week two more (of the original fixtures) started to fail. I
went to buy some more fixtures, but Home Depot was out. Last time I had
considered just replacing the ballast, but a new ballast was $19, the fixture
was $21, so I didn't. Anyway, I decided to try replacing the ballast this
time. The replacement ballast is nearly twice the size of the stock ballast,
and twice as heavy. It wired up a bit differently (the original had more
separate wires, the replacement mostly wires each end of the bulbs together).
But it fired right up with the new ballast, and even seems brighter. What's
more, I decided to try the "bad" bulbs (ones that no longer worked even in the
best of the original fixtures), and every one of them was fine with the
replacement ballast! I'm glad I hadn't had time to take them to the hazardous
waste drop off.
-Darrell
--
Darrell Walker
66 TR4A IRS CTC67956L
Vancouver, WA, USA
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