The seller's late father worked for Detroit Edison in the Ann Arbor area until he passed in the late 80's and this stuff has been sitting in the shed since then. Most is pretty dirty and sleeves chewed up by mice. There's mostly Westinghouse and GE stuff. A couple of those GE lamps are H175/W's! Haven't tested them yet but one looks somewhat used and the other NOS,
Wow great score! Gotta love those Ripley SunSwitches. Those MV lamps sound like really cool finds too. Are those NEMA heads 120V? I see a Westinghouse RMA NEMA head in the back left corner. I got one from Jace, a 100W MV. Nice solid fixture. I also see the Inspectors are making this rounds.
Thanks everyone! @Mike, yeah, they all appear to be 120v. I will soon test some lamps. The fixtures are going to need a serious cleaning before I test them. I may re-varnish the ballasts if they run good. The cores have only surface rust. I've seen old A-E/ITT ballasts actually have the cores swell up/separate because of rust getting in between the iron plates but these haven't done that yet.
Another thing I noticed...the "ears" for the diffuser latches are actually strapped onto the housing!
Sounds like a good idea to revarnish the ballasts. I often sand down and paint the core of a ballast is it's rusty to prevent further rusting and to make the ballast look better (plus then there's not rust powder all over the place). I use Rust-Oleum Gloss Black Enamel paint (brush-on paint). The black paint looks really sharp on a ballast core. I will repaint any rusty brackets inside the fixture with gloss black enamel paint too. My Westinghouse OV-15 TuDor was in really rough shape when I got it. All the steel parts were rusted badly and some corroded to the point where there was nothing left. I painted the ballast core, ballast bracket, and slipfitter clamps with gloss black enamel paint and it looks really good in contrast with the billiant silver paint my grandpa applied to the fixture body. I replaced all the screws and bolts too. The new slipfitter bolts I painted black too so they match. I will need to get some more hardware (screws) for the Tudor though since the ones i got don't fit all the holes (my fault since I assumed the screw holes were all the same since the screws visually looked the same).
Besides that, the only thing i really need to do is find a way to create a hinge cradle/power door screw-holder out of strap steel. I asked around at some local machine shops but they wouldn't give me the time of day unless I had them produced by the thousands. All it is, is a ~4" long piece of 1/2" wide by 1/16" thick steel strap with three ~90 degree bends and a 180 degree loop at the end. And then there's two holes drilled through it for screws with a speed nut attached at the end opposite the loop. Fairly simple piece to create but i don't have machine shop tools. I think the part is too small to make using a vice grip, as I thought about doing it myself with a vice grip and a hammer lol. Luckily I have one good one so all i need to do is have an exact copy made of it. i can't believe there isn't one machine shop around that can make that one little part for me. i even found a section of strap steel that is perfect to use, but it's no good to me if i can't make the part. The light restoration has turned out great so far but the light is useless without that part (as the doors won't be able to stay up if the fixture were to be installed). Thankfully the electrical wiring is in great shape. The fixture got removed because the capacitor failed (and looks like it created some sparks since the terminals were fried offand the leads were burnt) but it was only for power factor-correct purposes so i just rewired it without the capacitor and it works fine. I'd get another capacitor but the cap had no visible markings and the ballast label is faded (unreadable).
Ah thanks. Yeah Joe Maurath Jr had sold me the light at a good deal, since it is a rare light even though it's in such rough shape and it's HPS. It's a 1980 OV-15 Tudor with a serrated flat glass (which is REALLY cool!) and it's 150W HPS. He included a BT25 Westinghouse 150W HPS lamp and a 1980 Fisher Pierce photocell, as that's what they were originally installed with. I had a new NEMA tag made for it since the old one was gone. I'll PM you shortly.
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Another thing I noticed...the "ears" for the diffuser latches are actually strapped onto the housing!
Besides that, the only thing i really need to do is find a way to create a hinge cradle/power door screw-holder out of strap steel. I asked around at some local machine shops but they wouldn't give me the time of day unless I had them produced by the thousands. All it is, is a ~4" long piece of 1/2" wide by 1/16" thick steel strap with three ~90 degree bends and a 180 degree loop at the end. And then there's two holes drilled through it for screws with a speed nut attached at the end opposite the loop. Fairly simple piece to create but i don't have machine shop tools. I think the part is too small to make using a vice grip, as I thought about doing it myself with a vice grip and a hammer lol. Luckily I have one good one so all i need to do is have an exact copy made of it. i can't believe there isn't one machine shop around that can make that one little part for me. i even found a section of strap steel that is perfect to use, but it's no good to me if i can't make the part. The light restoration has turned out great so far but the light is useless without that part (as the doors won't be able to stay up if the fixture were to be installed). Thankfully the electrical wiring is in great shape. The fixture got removed because the capacitor failed (and looks like it created some sparks since the terminals were fried offand the leads were burnt) but it was only for power factor-correct purposes so i just rewired it without the capacitor and it works fine. I'd get another capacitor but the cap had no visible markings and the ballast label is faded (unreadable).