Workhorse 5 ballast and NO bulbs?

[headhawg7]

Last night I hooked up a workhorse 5 ballast to 2 20w NO bulbs and they fire perfectly. I used 14 gauge solid core copper wiring and used 62/36/2 solder to solder all of the connections. Question I have is will that solder cause a loss of power to the bulbs? There are basically 10 soldering points. Thanks Danny

[Glass World]

The short answer is no... it shouldn't. When you make a solder joint, however, you should have a good connection between the wire and the contact before you solder, however. Try to wrap the wire around the pin a few times or something like that... Think of the solder as just being there to keep the wire from falling off. In a good solder joint the electricity shouldn't have to go through the solder at all.

That said, even if there is solder between the wire and the contact you should be OK since solder is a very good conductor. The only potential problem would be if there was a lot of flux in the electricity's path. If you're concerned about it you can measure the resistance with a multimeter.

HTH

[69vette]

Originally posted by Glass World
The only potential problem would be if there was a lot of flux in the electricity's path.
HTH

The flux will be long gone by the time the wire gets hot enough to melt the solder.

[headhawg7]

Thats a great idea about the resistance. Didn't even think of that. Thanks Glass.