Gallery of Lights
The Site => General discussion => Topic started by: chapman84 on March 02, 2017, 08:54:26 PM
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I have a GE M-250R from the early 60's. It's 175 watt mercury vapor and one of the capacitor wires is broken I can't reattach it. I was just wondering what kind of capacitor would be suitable. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
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I'm guessing it has one of those regulator style 4 coil CW ballasts. It probably uses a 12uF 330v capacitor which you can probably find at a motor shop or eBay. You can substitute a higher voltage rated one without problems or a plastic cased one if it has the same rating.
If the spade terminals on the original cap are still good, you could also buy a crimper and spade set (http://i.stack.imgur.com/HlF3N.jpg) and then crimp on a new spade terminal to the wire.
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Yeah if the capacitor's spades are fine then you don't need a new capacitor, just a new slip-on connector.
I have two GEs with 175W 120/240V 4-coil ballasts and both use 13.5uf capacitors. The 400W 120/240V GEs from the 60s used two 13.5uf capacitors in parallel with each other (to make one 27uf capacitor). It's always better to go slightly lower on the uf rating that slightly over though since you'll stress the ballast.
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Interesting that the 175w M-250R non Crimfighters had 13.5 uF caps. The 175w Crimefighters all had 12 uF caps even though I think GE used the same core and coil for both models. I suppose a lower uF rating is fine, it just means the lamp current and secondary current will be slightly lower.
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I believe they used some variation of capacitors. Probably just whatever they could get within spec that they could find. I know my 13.5uf cap lights run pretty hot so 12uf might be better suited though the lamps might be underdriven. I'd eventually like to get a kWh meter to see how my street lights run.