A friend of mine got 2 today for a 2 lamp 20 watt  fixture he put up instead of his ultra balky to start dual 40 watt fixture which was an el cheapo and wouldn't start ( it is under the car port) in damp weather.



The date code is......    E
                          O
                          L
                          4



I burst out laughing when he told me.

Any idea on the date on these    

I am not good at this but my guess is December 2004.

Thanks, I thought EOL4 was funny.  These lamps striated and swirled and cut off and restarted numerous times before settling down. Every new Sylvania I have seen including the 14 watt T12 GE made by Sylvania did this.

Powell

That date code is almost a bad sign there.  Good thing it's not an ALTO.

BTW I think it was made in Nov of 2010.

His swirling changed when he used different starters. I have a 14 watter that now has about 2500 hours on it. (GE made by Sylvania) and it still will swirl some on a restart after a power failure, but it certainly is not as bad as when new. What IS it with these Sylvania lamps. I had  a NEW 40 watter given to me that would not light in his old preheaters..... it would act as if it were EOL.  When I tried it in mine same thing so I stuck it on my30/40 watt solid state ballast and it swirled madly and flickered (not rectifying though) for awhile.  After about 30 minutes it settled down, so I put it back into the 1950 preheater and it fired up fine. I took it back and it runs fine. My Sylvania made Vitalites do this also

Powell

@Powell: It is quite normal, when the lamp is stored for longer time without use, mainly in cold places (the mercury bind to inner metal parts, mainly the remains of the amalgam mercury dosing pellet and it need to heat up to release the mercury back). If you use the lamp on a full power ballast and/or in a fixture without cold air draft, it will recover...

 

  Both are now EOL due to lightning shorting out one ballast. My friend thought the started had gotten damaged after the lightning hit....so he put the good bulb in that side and POWWW!  Tonight he dug up a ballast and replaced it. So for now there is a high hours Chroma 50 and a used GE cool white. He had to replace the starter. Also wiped out was the DSL  modem and one DSL filter. He heard the storm coming and was reaching down to disconnect and POW POP! 

I think for brightness sake we will use SP35 lamps this time. He doesn't care for 3000K bulbs.


The ballast that got shorted out had gotten quite noisy he said. We weren't sure that was the one until it got blasted.

Powell