Ahh, I didn't see these so disregard my last comment. Yeah I'd say the ballast is either 50s or 60s era
I wonder if OL might be a date code.

I see that OL too. That should translate to February 1954!

Yep. OL is Feb. '54. though oddly enough, it looks liek 0L...

WOW!!! so my light is 1954?? awesome.

yeah totally an oldie! the date code didn't click in with me at first since forgot that ballasts had the code too. for a second i was only thinking that street lights had them... no if only they had dated their lamps with the transformer date codes! it would make it so much easier to decode them! I don't see why it's necessary to use morse code-like date stamps lol.

yeah LOL. anyway the ballast overdrives the lamp slightly. Killawatt says the fitting draws a total of around 24 watts when plugged in. this specific ballast gets quite warm but then again so does the one in my F13T8 fitting. has a BEAUTIFUL sound to it..

That's probably 24VA (volt-amps) which should give 14~15W at 50-60% power factor. Can you measure line current with your Kill-A-Watt?

my line is right around 118V

I meant the amps, not the volts LOL.

0.42 amps is what it is reading.. how is that for a 14 watt lamp?

Hmm, sounds like the lamp is overdriven on this ballast. At 0.6 PF it uses around 30w and if you subtract a few watts for ballast loss, the lamp still gets 25w. At 0.5 PF the ballast will use 25ish watts and put in around 20w to the lamp.

so this ballast would be happy driving a 20 watt lamp. I wanted to leave the fitting original. How bad is this set up? Killawat says it is pushing around 24 watts..

i think it's fine. I wouldn't use the ballast with let's say a 14W lamp though. overdriving the lamp is the same thing as having T8s on a high ballast factor ballast. The lamp life will be a tad shorter but the lamp will be brighter and use a few more watts. it won't hurt the ballast (or really the lamp either)

i do notice the ballast gets MUCH warmer when overdriving a lamp. I DO like the additional brightness. I am gonna run a vintage F14T12 Blue on it. It prob wont get more than 10-20 hours of use a month.

oh woops! i forgot this is a F14 fixture not a F20 lol. In that case you're totally fine. it's lasted this long...

I've heard that a 13W PL ballast drives a F14T12 much better than the average 14-20W ballast does. If you plan to use the fixture on a regular basis I would try that

where can i get a GOOD 13 watt ballast. The ones i have run right around 17watt total. which i guess is good.

There's a lot on eBay if you search for PL 13 Ballast or 13w ballast. I would buy a brand name ballast like Advance, Universal, or Robertson though.