You're doing better than I am! I've lost both sides on several fixtures, some only after a few months. Mine were cheap Home Depot fixtures. My guess is that the cheap shop light ballasts aren't designed to be run as many hours as we use them, but I'll defer to the electricians to verify that.

This happened to one of my fixtures and I only used that one for a relatively short time when one side went out. I assumed the ballast died prematurely, but then I got it working again temporarily by taking it out or turning the bulb around. But it kept going off again. Always hopeful, I've kept it just in case it's a short that can be fixed. My grandfather was an electronics whiz, but unfortunately he's gone now and I don't know anyone else that has a clue about electronics, sigh.

QUESTION........

Do these shoplights have a ballast on each end? Maybe a 2" square? Or when they turn on do they make a sudden loud buzz before they light?

If so, these are resitronic ballasts. They are the crappiest fluorescent ballasts you can find. They are just a group of capacitors which tend to blow if they don't have the perfect tube. They also eat up tubes before you know it.

For further explaination ask Zink!

-J-

"Do these shoplights have a ballast on each end?"

Sigh. Yes, I just learned this lesson. I had some of these ultra-cheap shoplights, and one failed.

I wanted the on/off pull switch and broke the fixture apart on Monday. And was stunned to see that the ballast was crammed into one end.

I took a look and yes, there's two fairly large capacitors and one of them was 'domed', which means it overheated and boiled until the top plumped up.

I pulled off the switch, and salvaged the wire for an overdrive project so I guess I got my $8 worth out of it.

I plan to watch out for this type of shoplight from now on.

HD has shoplights for $7.25 that have decent SL-15 ballasts, so why waste money on this resitronic junk?