MiamiCuse wrote:
I had a bunch of flourescent lights with the tubes went bad in my garage.
Some are 48" long ones and some are the U shaped tubes. Since I had seven
sets of lights I have been lazy and waited till now to replace them after
about six of the tubes burned out and 2 that are immiment (doing the
flickering thing and if I turn it off and back on again it will come up).

Now I bought 10 new tubes and replaced them. But out of eight tubes only
two came on the other six remain dead. It is a little tricky to get them in
and I had to push and twist them into place. I tried removing them and
reseating them again, no luck.

I must be doing something wrong? Are these tubes polarized? or can it
either end go in either socket? Even the U shaped tubes do not lit up and
there were working fine (flickering) before I installed the new ones. I was
pretty careful when I removed them so I don't think it is likely that I
damaged the sockets when I removed the old tubes.

Any idea?

Thanks in advance.

MC


As you say, they can be tricky to install -- especially the long ones.

Look carefully at each end of the ones that didn't come on and make sure
both pins are inside the socket. The proper way to install them
involves lining up the pins just off of vertical, sliding both ends into
their respective sockets, and then twisting 1/4 turn so the pins make
contact. I hope that makes sense -- it's a bit hard to describe in
words. It might help to study an empty socket to understand what must
happen.

There's also a possibility the ballasts are shot, but I'd suspect the
bulbs first.

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .