And utilities continue to use plastic.

There's nothign wrong with plastic, although glass is ideal, plastic is good for HPS wattages up to 150 and MV up to 175 IMO. It shouldn't be used with MH in case of lamp rupture....

Most manufactures don't sell MH fixtures with plastic.

My Utility stopped using plastic for 250 watt (that is if they listened...but they totally stopped for big fixtures which they used to use)

Nothing bugs me more than lights with heavily browned refractors like this: it blocks a lot of the light!

Plus if it's MV, it really makes the light look bad.

That's why I've always liked glass refractors more than plastic. I wonder how this looks at night.

It makes them look VERY YELLOWISH GREEN! I have seen it here, but it's less common to see than seeing them in PEPCO from what I see....Most likely, VERY HIGHLY likely this is 250 watt MV....we have a lot of plastic refractor 175s around here...and they don't get brown as bad as this...my first GE M-250R that was really brown was a 250 watt also........But SUN can brown them badly after a long time....even lower wattage.....another note seems this is a LATE 60s OV-15 instead of early 70s....

hint:...compare the door from yours to this one, Ian! (unless this actually has tape over them)

You think that's bad? Try 400 watt HPS with plastic. Not only do they brown, they just outright burn right through.

the refractor is a nice shade of "Diarrhea" brown

Looks like the hershey squirts eh?

indeed it does.

I enjoy repairing lights like this! Just makes it more fun being able to replace old and cruddy parts w/ new parts and still keeping a nice classic fixture in service!

Yes I agree, I'd give this bad boy a nice new Glass lens.

Yup and depending on the existing condition of the fixture I try to keep a few good ol Westy glass lense! Or at least that style!

I wish we had those style at work but we have so little of these fixtures left, it's hard to come by them. I don't get to work on lights to much since I'm the young guy. I get all the project work and the old timers get to do all the lighting.

I know of a few late 60's GE M-250R's with browned out refractors in my area.

I try to save them as often as possible, we have 4 servicers at my service center so I always check for good glass in the scrap box and save any good ones, also saves on costs when making stock orders. Luckily for me thats what I was hired to do is lighting so thats pretty much it unless were on storm

we don't have dedicated streetlight mechanics here, we all get the duty of replacing and maintaining lighting but usually the troublemen gets the main responsiblity.

Years ago our trouble men were doing maintence but they decided to try out the current system we use now and saw that it works way better.