THe Off Topic, Topic!!!!

[Mike]

Well I just got a 4ft 2-lamp slimline strip light today! $20 off Craigslist with the lamps! It's an old Day-O-Lite model (made right in Warwick, RI!) with a replacement Advance ballast from the 90s (originally Universal ballast per the labeling on the original wiring). Best part was that it was a 10 minute drive from my house to pick it up! The guy really took care of it when he removed it too. Not a scratch on it! I just cleaned it with some wet paper towels and it came clean as new!

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

Sweet find, Mike!  Got lamps yet? 

[Mike]

Thanks! It came with Sylvania Ecologic cool white lamps with low hours and I have a pair of NOS GE cool white slimline lamps (that I don't want to use). Other than that I have no slimline lamps at all. Maybe sometime I'll go back up to Webster Electric and get some 4ft slimline lamps and maybe some 4ft HO lamps too while I'm at it (and some good ol' F40T12s!). Nothing fancy though. Just either classic CW, classic Daylight, or SP35. Maybe some 5000K. And I'll probably get more mogul base 100W MVs "just because" lol. Not for awhile though. I've spend enough money for now. $200 per visit (or $400 total). A once in a lifetime experience though, with all those light bulbs!

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

I'd get something cheap and modern to use up, but that's just me.  Sylvania EcoLogic seems fitting.  Maybe some Altos.

[Mike]

Cheap I agree with. Not looking to spend big money. But I'd rather spend $1 or less per lamp on good quality vintage tubes than pay retail prices for current-production mediocre quality tubes. And for MV lamps it's a must to use vintage lamps. Modern lamps are just horrible except for Eye and Sylvania lamps, which are mediocre in quality compared to vintage lamps.

Yesterday I painted all but one of those six preheaters I got before I went on vacation. I found out the PERMALITE/Allied Fluorescent Mfg. Co. preheater was made right in Providence, RI! It's in very small print, which I found while masking off the label before painting. Definitely keeping that light! I will be trading/selling one of the preheaters though (the Arrow one). On the one I'm trading/selling I repainted the inner portion of the reflector (the white part) but left the gray paint original since most other people prefer the original paint. I personally like all-new paint unless the original paint is free from major scratches or rust patches.

The six lights consist of two Westinghouse lights, one which is restored and rewired an the other hasn't even been cleaned yet; Two York-Lite fixtures, which have been repainted inside and out and rewired and will be getting all new sockets when those arrive; One Arrow fluorescent fixture which I'll be selling/trading with partially rewired interior and new paint on the white portion of the reflector; and the last one was the PERMALITE fixture, which has all original wiring and was completely repainted except for the interior of the channel, since it was in perfect shape. The YORK-LITE fixtures had Adlite ballasts dated to 1962 but no dates on anything else. I switched the ballast in one of the York-Lite fixtures for the ballast in the Arrow fixture since the Arrow fixture's ballast was in better shape. So one of the 1962-dated ballasts is in the Arrow fixture but that fixture isn't really from 1962 (well who knows, by some weird chance it could be lol).

Needless to say, I've been quite busy restoring all these lights! I have fuses and a box of starters on order, awaiting their arrival. The sockets for the YORK-LITE fixtures are supposed to arrive today. Then I'm going to buy some very cheap bed sheets to wrap the fixtures in so they don't get scratched in storage in the shed.

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

You say you're looking to sell/trade, would you consider shipping to AK?

[Mike]

I would if you're positive you'll commit to buying it after I box it up. I've boxed stuff up for other LG members and then they never get back to me or decide they've changed their mind and it gets under my skin big time since now I've just wasted my time packing it up. I will be posting several pictures of it on LG either today or tomorrow so you can look at the pictures before. It's a nice fixture but I have a couple similar to it already.

I'm sure shipping won't be cheap so I'll give you a fair price on the fixture. I'll have to crunch some numbers and see how much I've put into the light. I paid $60 for all six lights, so I got a pretty good deal. That's just $10/light. And they all work too which is great. I haven't long-term tested any of them yet though. I'm waiting for the fuses to arrive so if anything goes haywire the fuse will blow. I have a handy space-saving method for shipping fluorescent shoplights, which entails attaching the reflector to the fixture upside-down and tucking the sockets into the ballast channel and having the recipent re-attach the sockets and correct the reflector. Helps to create a narrower box which might take a few bucks off the shipping. I insert some sort of insulation between the reflector and channel so the channel doesn't scratch the white side of the reflector.

With this fixture, the white portion of the reflector is all I painted. The gray is all original. there are some rusty spots and light rusty tinge to everything but overall it's in decent shape so it's just character IMO. The white side of the reflector is what matters since that's setting the efficiency of the fixture. This fixture also has a pull chain! This fixture has also been rewired (ballast wires are original though) and I will include starters. There's no mounting chain though. I clipped off all the chains from the lights since they were all nasty and rusty. The chain the lights use is cheap enough and easy to get at Home Depot or Lowes' so I don't bother trying to de-rust or paint the chain. I used to try painting the chain but I end up wasting more paint than what ends up on the chain so it's not worth it.

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

Yeah, I think I had that happen on another Mitchell preheat fixture Veryhighonoutput on LG sold me awhile ago, had to re-install the sockets.

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

I just bought the last two HID fixtures on the shelf at Walmart.

They'd both clearly been there awhile, the boxes were quite dusty and blemished.

Brinks 70w HPS and 100w PSMH.  Surprisingly well made for the cheap junk they are, I paid $84 for both of them combined!!

The PSMH is actually a true 'yardblaster' head, not a compact model.

I tested both briefly, wiring to an extension cord, and they do work.  I'll be mailing them to myself back home and installing them outside, albeit probably not until summer.

[xmaslightguy]

A month or so ago I was in Walmart and saw a couple HPS yardblasters on clearance .. don't remember the exact price, but I know it was less than $12...I was tempted to grab one but didn't.

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

I think I'm going back to Sentry for the 70w PSMH and 70w HPS Coooper ones they have as well.  77 bucks but worth it.

[xmaslightguy]

I saw some newly installed glare-bombs(LED streetlights) when going somewhere this evening. No idea what they are, but they are the first warm-white LED's I've seen on any streets around here. Sometime I need to get a daytime pic of one just to see what it is.

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

Interestingly, we've had them for like 8 years now and some have worn just like clear mercury!

[xmaslightguy]

@GEsoftwhite100watts
Are you saying they went the cyan-ish color of MV?

All the LEDs I've seen here have been CW...until these that just showed up.
Curious to see what the glare-bombs are when I get a daylight look at them..
whatever they are they are damn bright!

[GEsoftwhite100watts]

They aged much like a clear MV, yes.