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Universal F40T12 Preheat Ballast
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Well, my Universal two lamp F40T12 preheat ballast I mentioned last week arrived today. It's a NOS one from February 1975 and has short leads. Interestingly Universal made at least two types of F40T12 two lamp preheat ballasts. One being this type in the pic and the other is the more common one with the lead lamp's starter connecting to a starting compensator inside the ballast.
Even though this ballast dosen't have a starting compensator, the lamps as confirmed by a flash pattern check are run in lead-lag though. Kill-a-Watt said it drew 0.78A, 93W at 120v while running a pair of nearly new Sylvania 40w (no 34w suckers on this ballast) premium cool white lamps. Ballast is fairly quiet too, for a class B rated one.
Right now I don't have any plans for this ballast unless I come across a nice vintage fixture for it that was originally preheat. If I starting using it though, I'll probably add a 1A fuse on it as it dosen't have thermal protection (are preheat ballasts exempt? as my RS ballasts from that era all have thermal protection).
Oh and it also came with this pamphlet advertising Universal's rapid start ballast conversion kit:
Anyone have or seen such as kit?
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I really like old Universal ballasts!
I have one of those disconnect sockets lying around. I should take some pics of one. Oddly one of my preheat Cooper strips came with disconnect holders which is not needed.
Universal mostly varied labels by the model...
So far there's three variations, blue and yellow, green and yellow, and blue on white.
I'm not sure why they made two types of Tulamp ballast though.