Electrical experts...

[chrome91]

this is gonna be a headache. lol

to start, this morning i went to fire up my 250w MH/2x65w PC. ballast made a noise then nothing happened and it didnt fire up. after, i could flick the switch and it did nothing

store said it could be the switch, and if i wanted a replacement ballast, IceCap ballasts would be the way to go because the prongs on my halide are weird and they dont have a ballast to fit it. the ballast that busted is cheap anyways, so instead of replacing or attempting to repair it, i bought this IceCap ballast on ebay.

now this is the hard part, im a idiot when it comes to doing electrical stuff, but i figure i would try things myself before i get someone to do it. i wanted a guy at the store who knew what he was talking about to do it, but he said he couldnt for liability reasons. wish i could have given him a signed note saying if it caught fire or something its my problem

anyways, now how to wire the ballast. my old ballast had a unplugable power cord that went from a regular wall plug in to the ballast, and it can unplug from the ballast. can i just cut off the end of the plug in part, exposing the wires, and attach the wires from the IceCap to this (so i can plug the IceCap into the wall)?

also, to get wires from the ballast to the pendent, can i again cut off the plug in prong part from the pendent and straight attach the wires?

thanks for any help, if anyone wants more clarification or pics of where i want to cut off parts of wire i can post pics tomorrow

heres the ballast i ordered

 

[Luukosian]

Yeah you can do that I've done it for a few balasts. When you connect the wires, the proper way to do it is with solder and heatshrink. Since you are dealing with a decent amount of wattage i would definitely do it that way. generally you can just twist them together and use a wire nut and electrical tape but since we deal with water and possible splash hazards i would go the heatshrink route then wrap that with plenty of tape.

ps. make sure you connect everything properly and double check that everything is going where it is suppose to before you plug it in or you could have sparks/fire.

if in doubt of what you are doing double check the schematic for your ballast(printed on front) or if that doesn't help im sure me or someone else can go into more detail how to do it.

If you don't know how to solder/heatshrink well then butt connectors with plenty of tape would be another option but not the best way to do it.

 

[chrome91]

i know how to heatshrink, i learnt how when i installed subwoofers in my car and needed extra wiring

i chopped the one end off of the powercord, and the wires inside match what the pic of the ballast shows, green black and white.

Think i'll be good, if i still have trouble when the ballast comes i'll post it here

 

[chrome91]

it all connected good and works. a guy here told me the original ballast with it was known to be underdriven, and he was right. tank looks 200% brighter with the ice cap