Did you get this from the same seller I did? On Ebay. With the picture on there lacking the NEMA tag?

If you want I can give you a couple photocells, I mean you live close to me at the moment and maybe I can just give you a few. Before I move to Arkansas.

Nice! Did you get this M-250R2 off eBay? When was this fixture made? (date is on the label on the housing inside near the ballast in a WW-YY week-year format)

You can get a PC at Lowe's or Home Depot. Or if you want I can send you one of mine.

You can run MH lamps on 100V 150W HPS but this is 55V HPS (100V HPS is rare) so no, there is no way to run MH (or MV for that matter).

Mike's right, a mv lamp will cycle on a 55v hps ballast. Never tried a mh but seeing they are similar power rating wise as a mv lamp it will likely not work.

We use to install these on our system before we went with AE. We use 100/150 ballasts as opposed to carrying 2 separate fixtures. I personally prefer the ge simply due to the quality. I will give AE credit for their latch design over ge though.

Ah so you think GE is better quality over AEL? Everyone says AEL is better quality and they're far cheaper but I know the ITT and Thomas & Betts fixtures were never anything above and beyond. They weren't terrible, there's plenty here left in service from the late 80s and early 90s, but they seem inferior to GE and even Cooper lights of that time. Cooper lights were pretty good until the 90s/2000s. Now they're just OK lol.

100/175W MV fixtures were the big thing here, with 240V reactor ballast with PCs wired for 120V. Pretty unique fixture wiring used around here! Now of course they just use regular single wattage 120V HPS lights. GE's quality has gone downhill too over the past 20 years. Still good fixture IMO but their 80s fixtures were better. GE's fixtures were at their best in the 60s. I think the mid-60s M-250R, M-400, and M-1000 were the best cobraheads ever made out there. the early 60s ones were great too but they seem to get really rusty inside, at least in the humid salty climate here. The 1965-1969 GEs seem better built to me than the pre-'65 ones. Just in my opinion though.

Hps wise, I prefer GE. Here as of lately we've come across a lot of defective AE ballasts right out of the box. Also not to mention the bad wiring from the factory on pc recepticals. As for ge mercs, the 100 & 175 were not bad, even up to the ban. The older 40's were great and still going strong. The current m400r3's are garbage mv wise. The caps are the worst, lucky to get 5 years before they short. Hps wise though I will take ge hps over AE any day. We didn't use a lot of AE mv but do have a good number in 175 and they are hit or miss when it comes to reliability. Generally the caps go bad and I'll just bypass them if the short circuit test checks good.

That's interesting. AEL ballasts are rebranded Advance ballasts so I'd expect them to be good. Bad wiring on the PC sockets? Like wired wrong or the wiring was no good in a literal sense? Yeah GE still makes good ballasts, though I'm pretty sure they do not make the PSMH ballasts in their fixtures. They do still make the HPS ballasts though. Ah the capacitors are just PF-correcting? Here if the fixture doesn't light with a new lamp and PC it's replaced with no questions asked. They'll change the refractor in a small sized fixture if need be and they'll replace a door if they happen to have one on the truck. Typically it's M-250R2s they replace the doors on since they make up most of the fixture population around here.

Do you use any Cooper lights?

Yeah, the wiring going to the rec is wired wrong, granted it's a simple fix by switching the tabs on the ballast and terminal but still rather annoying. I do give credit to AE when it comes to high efficiency optics. They are the best hands down in my opinion. I pretty much carry all possible parts on my truck so that I can get a few more years out of a fixture if possible, so long as the rest of the fixture is still in good condition. Heck I even carry lense gaskets lol.

We don't use cooper hid, however we do still have many Crouse hinds still in service. They seem reliable for the most part so long as birds don't get in them. Drives me nuts when they get installed w/o the bird guards. We are going with cooper brand LED's here soon as soon as we deplete the hadco stock we have.

Nice find...you should be able to get a lamp for it at Home Depot or Lowes...or check the ReStore.

Nice find! HD or Lowe's should have the proper lamp if you can't wait to light it up but I think eBay will have them for cheaper.

Wow that's crazy that a manufacturer would wire the PC sockets up wrong! Yeah I heard their HE FCO optics are very good. The newer Cooper refractors used on the OVZ have excellent lamp distribution. The best I've ever seen with HPS. No streaks or dark/bright spots. Very evenly lit area.

Yeah I have a 1990 Cooper OVC, 50W HPS. Nice fixture. I like it a lot. The casting seems very thin to me but a nice looking fixture. It was only in service a little over 5 years.

I have a few NOS 150/D lamps, I have one installed in my M250A2 in my room that I converted to FCO a while back. The coated lamps are much better IMO for FCO as there is no glare compared to a clear lamp. With GE FCO there is a bright streak in the middle of the pattern. I want to take one of those /D lamps and put it in service near my house to see the real difference compared to a clear lamp.

Yeah the coated lamps are nice for FCO. I have a coated 50W HPS lamp and a coated 150W HPS lamp. I wish I had one in 70W though for my M-250R2, though now I have it converted to drop lens, since the reflectors can be swapped simply by removing the screw and swapping the slip-on connectors. My M-250R2 is from 1985 (first year they were made) so it's got a metallic NEMA tag and the street side of the refractor is recessed into the door.

What year is your M-250A2? I have an M-250A2 FCO from 1987. It was originally 100/175W MV (they used a lot of those in the 80s here) and it was removed in the early 90s and rebuilt as a 50W HPS unit. I have a spare blank ballast door that I installed a 250W Advance MH/MV ballast on so I can make my M-250A2 FCO 50W HPS or 250W MH or 250W MV. Right now it's installed in my backyard with the 250W door and a /DX Sylvania merc from 2010. Not used regularly, just for parties. If I had it in nightly use I'd use the 50W door and then just swap the door and lamp when we had parties for brighter white light and then revert back to the 50W HPS so the meter isn't racing all night. Since it's FCO it wouldn't bother the neighbors, though if I were to use a MH lamp I'd probably swap the FCO glass for a drop glass since I don't think an FCO glass would contain a lamp explosion. The lamp is within an inch or less of the glass so the impact would probably be the equivalent of smacking the glass with a rubber mallet.

Mine are NOS from 1996, got a good deal on them on ebay several years back. You should get a ge sag lense to use in place of the flat glass, that would definitely contain a lamp explosion and still maintain the FCO optics. I'm actually looking a getting a 50 hps door to have and mess with. 150 is a little bright for the room. Lol

Yep I got this one off eBay, (probably was the same seller as yours Lil'Cinnamon - picture didn't have a NEMA tag)... one day I just typed "GE M250" into the search, saw this & put it in my watchlist, then about a week later the seller put it on sale so I bought one

I had no idea Lowe's/Home Depot even sold PC's, figured I'd have to find one on eBay .. Lil'Cinnamon I might just take you up on that offer.

I assumed a MH or MV lamp would not work, but wanted to douple check before getting a HPS one.
I think I'll check the local ReStore first, I know I've seen HPS lamps there in the past...
(Also whats a 'CosmoWhite' lamp? I've seen it mentioned on the ATL site & it supposedly works on HPS ballasts (is it just a less-orange HPS?))

Datecode is 04-07 .. so 4th week of 2007?

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Also interesting reading through all the replies

Yup, 04-07 should be the 4th week of 2007. If no luck at the restore you're talking about, I've seen several on ebay for less than $8. That's for the good ones and not the crap Alto ones out there. I'm actually watching that seller and another one that has some 70w M250A2's for $80. I'm thinking about grabbing one of those or a 50w dior for the A2 I have mounted now. So many choices. Lol

Ick! I hate sag lenses lol. I'd like to find a 175W MH/MV door and maybe a 100 or 150W HPS ballast door since I have those wattage lamps. Yeah 50W is a nice brightness. A little dim for task lighting but nice if you're just relaxing. 70W HPS or 100W MV is perfect for my room. Sometimes I use a browned out refractor in the light I mount in my room since it helps diffuse the light too.

Yep 4th week of 2007.

I believe a CosmoWhite lamp is a CMH lamp that's designed for HPS ballasts. Unfortunately I think it's for European ballasts so it won't run on a 55v HPS ballast. You could however try running them on the same wattage PSMH ballast as I think our PSMH ballasts and European HPS ballasts have similar arc voltages.

As for the less yellow HPS lamps, I think Eye makes them but I believe they're not cheap so it might be cheaper to just reballast to MV or MH to get white light.

You could always look for a 100/150 HPS ballast. Simple tab switch and change lamp, beats having separate doors. I eventually want to find a merc door for mine. Heck I'd really like to find a 175w MH door and keep it FCO and just find a open rated MH lamp incase of rupture.

Yeah a 100/150W HPS fixture would be cool. They seem less common than single wattage. I have three 175W MH lamps and three 175W MV fixtures, but they won't light the MH lamps, just MV. They're unprotected though.


Yeah the MH retrofit lamps for use on HPS are only made for the 100V lamps here (400W and less commonly, 250W)

If I remember, there is a 100/150 AE115 on ebay now. Not sure the price but it's unfinished so it does look kinda cool. Can't remember if it has HE optics or not. The ballasts are less common. The only place I've seen them is at work. Lol I did recently get a 250/400 hps ballast so I eventually plan to build a box for testing 100/150/250/400w lamps and really be able to cut down on weight.