I didn't purchase the ballast, so I don't have a warranty, its about 12 years old, given to me by my brother in law. He used it for about 5-6 successful grows and while he was flowering the final crop he was able to grow, during the day cycle, it just stopped working. It buzzes but neither of the 2 bulbs will light. Its an agrostar 400 watt AS51 I think. Does anyone know what the problem could be? If I can fix it for cheap?
Id call up a hydro store and talk to them. A 12 year old its most likely a magnetic ballast and it can be repaired. Dunno how much though.
Hydro stores should have everything you need. Hell if not go to a petstore and in the fish section it might have parts.
There are 4 main components of a magnetic HPS light: Coil, capacitor, ingnitor and bulb. The first thing obviously to check is that the bulb is good, either by putting the bulb in a known good ballast or a known good bulb into yours. The Coil is the heavy, copper wire wound component, These rarely go bad which leaves you with the ingnitor and the capacitor. The capacitor will be usually be the larger of the two, and usually is a round or oblong shaped cylinder with two wire terminals at the top. The capacitor will be rated by voltage and Farads. You'll see something like "600v 10mF"... Make sure you replace it with a capacitor of the same rating. The ingnitor is sometimes a small circuit board with several small components soldered on it or more often it is a small, sealed device. The capacitor and the ingnitor can be purchased online for about $10.00 a piece. I would replace both of them as my expereince has been that when one goes out the other wont be far behind.