Hello everyone, I'm Nick. I found this site a few weeks ago and have really enjoyed exploring it! Lots of cool photos on here. Anyway, I went to my local ReStore yesterday (one of my favorite places) and scored three 3-lamp "Edwin F. Guth Co." preheat fluorescent fixtures for $20, which came with a few modern F40T12 lamps. I also paid $9 for nine Sylvania Lifeline F40T12 lamps, 6 cool white and 3 daylight. Anyway, I opened the fixtures as soon as I got them home and found that each contained a 2-lamp ballast and a 1-lamp ballast. The 1-lamp ballasts are all GE and all dead. There is one Advance 2-lamp that is perfectly intact and appears to be a replacement. The others are GE 2-lamp ballasts with tar oozing out. One of those works fine, and the other would only light one lamp. I removed all three 1-lamp ballasts and the malfunctioning 2-lamp. I installed a 3-lamp electronic ballast in the fixture with no good ballasts, and left the other two lights as 2-lampers. I am planning on getting some replacement preheat ballasts on eBay to restore all the fixtures to the original configuration. As far as the condition of the fixtures themselves, only two of the three glass diffusers are present and one is broken. Oh well, it was still a good deal.

Anyway, the reason I came here is to find any information on these fixtures, like time period (I'm guessing '50s), value, rarity, availability of parts, etc. I couldn't find anything on them via a Google search (besides the Guth company itself) so I decided to ask here.

Thanks in advance.

hello nick wellcome to Lighting Gallery

 those are nice Preheat fixture you got there, those Daylight lifelines are more rare then the Coow white ones
as the lamps are made from the very late 60s to the end of 1970s

 As far as ballast goes, there replacement ballast kicking around on Ebay and Restore
 the problem with Full power ballast is people dont know, and put in 34 watt lamps. The energy saving
 ballast roaster in them, thinkin that they save energy, ends up cooking the ballast becase
 the ballast is drawing more current then it should and cause them to overheat.
 Universal 205 is good ballast replacement, and every now then you will find GE tulamp ballast

  other than that it a great score

Wellcome to LG and that some neat fixtures

The ballasts are generally damaged by using wiht improper lamps as Funkybulb mentioned, or with lamps at end of life which cause continuous flashing, in turn damaging the starter, which then shorts out and blows the ballast

There were two 25 watt shop light bulbs among the ones in the lights. That's probably what caused the damage. I have those doing duty in a T12/T8 electronic strip light that is rated for them. I'm also running two of the cool white Lifelines in a '90s T12 fixture with a typical Advance rapid start ballast. The color is better than most new cool whites! I will hopefully be getting some preheat ballasts on eBay soon to get these old lights working like they're supposed to.

Best wishes

If you can't find the wanted ballasts but you have 240v available, you can use plain modern 240v 50Hz Preheat ballasts which are 2 wire chokes. Theyll underpower the lamps a bit on 60Hz but not too bad

Thanks for the suggestion, but these need to be able to run on 120 volts.

Hey there and welcome to the site. Those preheat troffers are pretty hard to come by nowadays and especially with the glass diffusers so it's pretty sweet you found one. I've found some tulamp preheat ballasts on ebay, Valmonts. I'll link you right here. I may have some 30/40 watt 1 lamp preheat ballasts too although they're mostly LPF versions. You could scour ebay though if you need the HPF version. The model number on the HPF version is 215-L-TC-P for Universal/Magnetek's version. I'm not sure if any other brands made them as long as Universal/Magnetek did but that should help you find them. There are also safeguards you can use to keep your new preheat ballasts from getting cooked such as only using 40 watt lamps, using manual reset starters if you can find them and if you really want to play it safe an inline fuse. Hope this is helpful.

Thanks for the link to the Valmonts; I found a Universal 205 for less but I'm gonna need multiple units as the remaining leaky GE draws a lot more power than it should. Haven't tested the Advance two lamp for power consumption but I expect it to be OK. I also replaced one of the lampholders today because I dropped the ballast cover on one of them and shattered it. There is a big quality difference between the old and new lampholders, but everything works fine.

Good news! I have a Universal 205 and one of the aforementioned Valmont ballasts on the way. I'm still working on the single-lamp ballasts. I will also need a few FS-4 starters, but I can get those anytime.

By the way, are these good ballasts? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370789341251#ht_720wt_956

Welcome to LG and nice fixtures, glass lensed and preheat troffers are very rare nowadays. Those Universal single lamp ballasts you linked to are good quality but they're LPF, I think they're still made too since LPF ballasts were exempt from most of the ballast bans that saw rapid start and 2 lamp preheat types banned.

HPF single lamp preheat F40 ballasts sometimes show up on eBay but are less common than their two lamp cousins. If you don't mind using a LPF ballast I would grab those Universals or any other LPF ballast on eBay. There should be a bunch for sale if you search preheat ballast.

As for the starters like you said FS-4 are easily found but the cutout types are harder to find nowadays but they're common on eBay.

What advantages are there to using high power factor ballasts? Also, would this ballast be a better choice? These appear to be very common and seem to have been made until pretty recently.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PHILIPS-ADVANCE-L-140F-TP-PRE-HEAT-MAGNETIC-BALLAST-1-LAMP-120V-/151044597730?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item232af5a7e2

Finally, am I correct in thinking a cutout starter will protect the ballast once a lamp reaches EOL? I plan on monitoring these fixtures closely so any faulty lamps will be replaced promptly. In that case, should I worry about getting cutout starters?

hello Nick, These power factor thing, had to do with the current is in phase with the voltage
 as normal power factor usally lag the current with the voltage makeing the current out of sync
 while the High Power Factor have a Cap inside the ballast to help smooth out the the current dips
 with the voltage in phase, Thermal cutout starter is a must have if it going to be out of reach
or if you have very vintage ballast to protect. number one rule is never put 34 watt lamps on preheat
unless you testing Unknown ballast for short period of time to see if the ballast is good or not
 as you dont want to ruin a full power lamps and vintage lamps incase of bad ballast that blows
the cathodes. and putting Fuses in place, is the best safe guard, in event the ballast do become
shorted in turns, it will draw more current, As there still lot of older Preheat fixture
out there that still works but they have no thermal protection. the ones that still works
but draw more current then usual if it HPF ballast it sign that the cap is going bad causing them
to draw more current. inside the ballast case. Far as normal powerfactor ones goes there still good ballast
as those dont come with the cap, but the good news you can add the cap like european does to correct the powerfactor if wanted.

I went ahead and grabbed the four Universals. They are advertised as working; hopefully that's the case. Also, does anyone know how to remove the black tar from the fixtures? I already know it probably contains PCBs.

Hi Nick...I'm about 60 miles southeast of Anderson in rural Newberry county. Watch Ebay for Dura FS-4 or FS-40 NA Dura starters or the Sylvania "Robot Cop" starters. They have automatic reset.  I have some I bought and 2 are going in over the transmitters in theh 1946 Half piper here. I hate changing bulbs. So far I have caught them early except the one that EOLed in the lead part and broke the filament and went out, so there was no blinking.

Automatic reset - Does it mean that if i leave it energized with EOL lamp it will nce in a time wake up, flash some more and go back off ?