The power light I'm currently working on upgrading has alot of wires in it. As a result there's alot of wire caps. And in order to organize these wire caps I used electrical tape and zip ties.... As much as I hate using all three of these things in large quantities I don't have a terminal block that I can rig in.

Also one of the wires snapped off the ballast so I had to remove the paper around the windings and guess what I used to reinsulate it? F-ing electrical tape due to lack of other means. Is this bad?

Yeah not a fan of using regular electrical tape in high temp applications. I've seen Kapton tape used in some ballasts as a overwrap. It's a bit expensive but if I had tape over a ballast, that's probably what I would use.

Kapton tape is ok for high temperature environments, but the adhesive thats on cheap tapes might not be as good, so might unstick with time. With that said, it still is the best electrical tape for such applications

Good plastic tape like 3M seems to hold up well in most applications, but i dont think there are no applications in electrics that require electrical tape to solve in permanent installation

Cheap PVC tapes dont even try, they turn into a sticky melted goo on their own without even being in a hot environment



Wire nuts made of solid plastic will hold up fine as long as installed correctly. For hard environments i'd use something rated for the high temperature, or ones made of Phenolic polymer - Some vintage ones are made of it, i dont know of any modern ones are



Zipties do sometimes dry up and snap. Question is what will happen then ? If all wires are connected well and arent exposed, this won't result in anything except the wiring becoming cluttered - So you can just fit another one

For the wirenuts I like to use Marrette No. 31, 33 and 35 connectors for wiring inside HID fixtures. They're rated for higher temperatures compared to the regular wirenuts. I believe Ideal makes a similar high temperature wirenut too.

As for zip ties, the black nylon UV resistant ones might fair better in a high temperature environment.

Yeah the thing I dislike the most about cheap electrical tape is the fact that they turn to goo (or at least the adhesive does) after a while, even at room temperature.

Self-amalgamating tape is useful sometimes. I used it to waterproof outside coax connections on my amateur radio antenna installations. It does degrade under UV after a while though, but it should be ok for wrapping those lovely wire nuts you have over there, as long as they're a reasonable distance from the actual lamp.

You cannot use this to coat a ballast winding. It will entrap heat

True, but I said it would be useful sometimes, such as for wire nuts and terminal blocks etc. I used it on my external coax connectors and some of it is still up on other people's systems I put in after 20+ years.