Hi- This old 4ft porcelain fluorescent shop light that was left here when we bought our house recently stopped working. I cleaned it up and am rewiring it to use in the part of the basement that I'm finishing.  I've been coming up with a surprising amount of blanks just googling around, so I joined this group! What do I have here? I can read 'Type F- 100 SN. 19351' from the sticker, but that's it.  Pic attached- thanks for looking!

There was a 4' T12 fixture made called the HF-100, but that's not what you have.  That's not actually a 5' T17 fixture by chance, is it?  A photo of the other side would be helpful.  F100 sometimes refers to the 100W 60" lamps.

Thanks for the reply- the fixture takes a 4' bulb, and is 53' L x 13" W.   I've tried a few different formats and can't get any pic to upload bc of the file size restriction...even though they don't exceed it.  The other side is white, and I'll keep trying

Larger files are allowed in the gallery and it is possible to link or embed those in a forum post.  Otherwise I'd try resizing them with an image editor (MS Paint would suffice).  If it's a 4' fixture it'll surely be possible to repair it using standard parts.  The specific make and model of the fixture isn't crucial information.  Do you believe the ballast is bad?  Do you care about using period components?  For instance finding a vintage preheat ballast may be more difficult than locating a newer preheat ballast which may be more difficult still than locating a modern rapid start or electronic ballast.

I have found a few European style 110V 60Hz and 120V 60Hz F40T12 preheat ballasts on eBay lately, but they are single lamp ballasts. If the original ballast is bad, You could probably use 2 of those ballasts in your fixture.

Here is what they look like:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/326285631061

https://www.ebay.com/itm/303790783741

https://www.ebay.com/itm/303790782147

Ideally, period correct 2 lamp lead-lag ballasts are preferable, but they sadly contain PCBs in their capacitors.

Thanks for the info! I also think the ballast is bad, it was leaking and I (wearing gloves) scraped off the inside of the fixtures where all the wiring is held.  I’m retrofitting it with non-shunted tombstones and one sided LEDs. 

Learning now that the black stuff are PCBs…

Heyy thanks for the reply! The ballast was definitely bad, it was leaking and I scraped it off the inside (I was wearing gloves).  New to this and now not sure how I’m going to dispose of it, but I’ll look up the proper channels for my area.  I’m retrofitting it with non shunted tombstones and 4ft LEDs

Just so you know, this fluorescent fixture design is highly sought after by some collectors and if they wanted the fixture, they would prefer new preheat fluorescent ballasts. Those European style ballasts that I linked do not leak PCBs at all as they have open cores.

Oh wow okay thanks for that! I’ll save the original components in case I ever decide to sell it, or in case I want to properly restore it.  Figured it’d look pretty cool centered over my office desk in my basement that I’m refinishing.

Nice fixture, good thing you wore gloves for the removal. Most of the PCBs are concentrated inside the capacitor which is sealed during normal operation, but if the ballast got hot enough to leak the tar potting, there is a chance the capacitor might have leaked as well.

There are several options you could do to fix this up:

1. Buy a F40T12 two lamp preheat ballast and use that, the two lamp F40 preheat ballasts were made until the mid 2000s and the ones made from 1979 onwards were generally PCB free. You can still find these ballasts from time to time on eBay, just make sure you get a PCB free one by checking the picture of the label before buying. Most non PCB ballasts will have No PCBs or something similar on the label. This is probably the most expensive option, but it keeps the fixture the most original.

2. Buy a pair of single lamp preheat F40 ballasts, either the European style or the North American style and install those. It might be cheaper depending on if you find a good deal on a two lamp ballast. However you will probably need to modify the fixture (e.g. drill additional holes) in order to mount two ballasts inside. However the outward appearance and startup behavior will be fairly authentic.

3. Keep the fixture using T12 fluorescent but use a more readily found ballast such as a rapid start ballast or a electronic ballast.

4. Convert the fixture to T8 fluorescent, this will allow you to run plug and play LED tubes as well as T8 fluorescent. However the T8 tubes are thinner than T12 and make look a bit odd in a vintage fixture depending on the design.

5. Convert the fixture to LED using direct wire LED tubes, this is probably the cheapest option to get the fixture going again and you use the least energy, but like with the T8, some fixture designs look a bit odd converted to LED.