Replacing Coralife T5 ballast - "DIY"

[justahobby]

I thought I would do a little write up on changing the stock ballast in my 30" T5HO Coralife fixture. I bought it newly used a while back. Ran it for less than a month when I put a Target timer on it. Came home that evening to a broken ballast.

While coralife may not have great, long lasting products their customer service (Rob) is outstanding. I called them and they replaced.... the entire fixture. I had a ballast and end caps lying around already wired from my ex-girlfriend's attempt at SW. So I figured WTH:


First I removed the plastic ends on the fixture (each has three screws). Upon removal of the end with the power cord & switch you will find the T5 end caps with blue and red wires. Snip them off leaving as much wire on the end caps as possible.

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Once these wires are clipped you will be able to slide the reflector the other way (away from the power cord) and clip the wires on the other end caps. These are much longer and easier to manage.

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Once that is done you may slide the reflector off completely, which leaves the culprit in plain site (the ballast, duh!). Clip the white and black wires leaving the ballast. Kind of hard to see in this pic...

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Once you are looking at the ballast you will notice two little screws holding it in place. Now here is where I did it the hard way. And this is where you get to benefit Once the reflector is off, the fixture folds in half and can be separated into two pieces!! Otherwise you are scratching your head, wondering what tiny screwdriver the used to get them in there in the first place
This is looking at the top of the fixture with the two halves separated:
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Go ahead and remove the screws holding the ballast in place while silently reminding yourself to invite me over for a beer for being the crash dummy.