Help with wiring floursent lights

[aka rotten]

Guys i,m no an electrician by trade so be easy on me.Few weeks ago i asked about replacing ballasts in lights which some havent worked in several years.long story short,my grandson removed lights from celing,and i rewired new ballasts in ea one,plugged temp power coard in ea and they all work,every one 2 ballasts and 4 bulbs,I felt like class A electrician then,Problem lays when he started hooking them back to celing 3-4 didnt work.I noticed the ones not working have 6 wires comming from celing [white wrapped wires with one black,one white and green ground]The light that work have just one of those wires comming thru hole he simply wired white to white black to black and grounded to light on a little metel clip that was there for ground.From that discription can yall tell me why some of the ones whith 6 wires comming thru cealing he simply wired like colors together like the single wire ones and there the one not working.i f i take light back down and plug it to temp plug just hookin to extention coard they work,if any of this make sence to anyone see if you could guide me,Thanks,Paul

 

[aka rotten]

Anybody got an idea mabee?

 

[laser3kw]

just a guess, from what you described, it sounds like the fixtures are wired with "Romax" type product. That would be a plastic sheath around three wires, one black insulated, one white insulated and one green insulated.
I would check voltages on each bundle(black to white - 120v) It could be the other lights are controlled by another switch? It might be that the fixtures that have two romex drops from the ceiling have to be wired together to supply power to the next fixture. If you are not sure, please get someone that has some knowledge to guide you. This isn't the place you want to "guess" what is correct.

 

[jtbinvalrico]

Sounds like they are wired in series. If you have two wires coming in to the fixture, one wire is bringing power in while the other one is sending it to the next fixture in line.

Keep your fixtures up. Get a meter and determine which wires are hot when you throw the wall switch. Next, set that meter to check continuity between the wires coming out of be fixtures.

I think your problem is that the extra wires are being connected to a loop that goes no where. Or, your problem could be more complicated than this. Regardless, try to rule out the simple stuff first.

 

[rmmiller]

This won't help now but maybe in the future it will. I always mark the wires and take a picture before I remove something I'm not sure about, helps it go back together the way it was.