I was working outside on the house yesterday as the weather has been unseasonably warm all week . I also decided to fire up the Wide-Lite as it's been a few months since it's been lit . WELL , the current N.O.S. 80's GE 1000w/DX MV lamp which I installed back in Sept. when It was used during my neighbor's , son's wedding reception took about 10 min. to come out of the pink stage and never ran up any brighter than a 50w MV .  Looks like I need to go up on the roof and check things out. Hopefully it's either another bad cap or a defective lamp . I'm not really in the mood to change a ballast right now !

Oof, that sucks. Lets hope it's the lamp or cap.

 I agree !   It wouldn't be the 1st time I've had a N.O.S. lamp fail prematurely . Plus , the last time I replaced the cap , it was with another used one .

I've had to replace a 100w Sylvania ED17 MV lamp in one of my lights as it would have trouble starting. It was a NOS one installed in 2009 that received fairly light use. It still works but for some reason it was having trouble starting in colder weather.

Ended up putting in a 100w A23 Philips until I find another lamp for it.

@wide-lite 1000 - Hopefully it's just a cap. For something harder to access I'd bite the bullet and just buy a new cap for it. 

 The cap's not too bad to replace : https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5203&pos=93&pid=162666  My issue is trying to work while perched at the peak of a slippery metal roof ! The old galvanized roof wasn't a problem , the new one SUCKS !!

 As for lamps , I've had a N.O.S. 175 Westy die after 3-4 nights of D2D use and a 400w coated dome Sylvania fail to run up completely and then do absolutely nothing on the next attempt to light it .

Is the ballast CWA or HX? HX don't requires capacitor for optimal performance.

 CWA .