It won't work, but it won't trip the breaker either.

I don't know, I'm sure it won't trip a breaker, when I connected my 600 volt MH ballast to 120 volt nothing happened, at all.

I spotted some text under the ballast, not sure what it means though It says "429E2" on the plastic. It says it twice and the E is smaller.

What does it mean? Will it help me figure out the specs of the ballast?

I think that's just a part code.

I still want to know how to wire this. I wired it like in the diagram and like I said the lamp doesn't brighten up all the way it only goes to a bit below 100 watt MV and stops brightening up. (400 watt MV lamp) What do you think is wrong?

It's sounding like a bad Cap, I don't think the lamp would Ignite of it was being underpowerd.

Well it was a 400 watt MV lamp I powered. Would it be the same? And why would the capacitors be bad? Where would I get new capacitors?

Since both capacitors are 10 UF could I Just use one 20 UF capacitor for this to work?

Capacitors fail all the time, Ever see a dim burning HPS fixture? Thats why. I've changed out bad caps and gotten Lights back to full brightness. As for changing two 10uF to a 20uF, I'm not sure but Someone here may know that question.

I don't think a 400 watt lamp on a 700/1000 watt ballast would burn dim. I've seen a 250 watt HPS lamp run for years on a 400 watt ballast.

Well there are TWO 10 UF capacitors. I do have a 24 UF capacitor.. Would that work?

I imagine that like the caps in old stereo gear HID caps will also dry out with age. You can probably get new caps off of eBay or from Grainger, note the capacitance of them (in uF) the max voltage and how they are wired.

Make sure you get caps with the same capacitance (note that with two connected in parallel you can use a single cap that's the sum of the two cap values), also make sure that the max cap voltage is equal to or greater than what the original caps were for and you're good to go.

As for yours if you want to use a single 20uF instead of two 10uF check if they are connected in PARALLEL because caps values only add when in parallel.

They are wired in parallel, how would you be able to tell?

Ah ok, yeah feel free to use a 20uF cap instead of the two then. And it's because capacitors in parallel add and capacitors in series add reciprocally (1/xxuF + 1/xxuF...). Oh and and what voltage are they?

550 VAC. And How would I KNOW if they are wired paralell?

Can you get another angle of the connections? They look like they are wired in Parallel to me.

I rewired the whole fixture to how Micheal's wiring diagram was, and the thing decided to work.

One of the capacitors is missing the resister on the top. Hmm I might see the problem. Let me try one more thing.

Yeah looks like parallel to me too, in case you're wondering here's how capacitors look in parallel.

Oh and I doubt the discharge resistor is causing a problem, the resistor only discharges the cap so you don't get shocked by it when the power is off.

Yeah. The lamp still won't brighten all the way. Can you help me get a new capacitors for this fixture? Jace recommends that I get two 10 UF ones again.. Also it might just be ONE of the capacitors that is causing the problem.

Alright this should be good for this ballast.

It's waaay too expensive for me. Plus wouldn't I have to buy TWO of them? Well I guess I can go back to that site tomorrow and try to get two capacitors from one of the OTHER fixtures. That would probably be the better way.

Yeah I would recommend changing both.

Watch out when using older caps though, sometimes a cap blowing will take the ballast with it and possibly leave a mess of PCBs everywhere.