Got back to her just now…..
plot twist, it’s not as old as I thought.
I wonder how many years it sat in the sun waiting for me. It had a magnet affixed, good enough to hold on to the steel roof of the tractor I suppose.
That motor date doesn't really match the serial number, but the motor doesn't look replaced. I know there was wiggle room between production date and motor date, meaning you could have a lower number with a newer motor. Your serial number is 1600ish lower than mine but the motor a year newer. I would guess they were both made around the same time and motor batch, not light batch, is the variable. By the late 1980s Whelen was "using up" the gearbox style motors using Rowe motors inside.
Whelen was a huge customer for Rowe and probably ordered thousands at a time, Whelen's stock must have been massive. They used 55, 75, 90, and 16 RPM versions of the gearbox style. There is debate about which of these speeds are gear box based and which are a different motor speed. We do know Whelen bought multiple speeds of the same sized Rowe motor and put them into a gearbox shared between many products (80h, 90h, 33, 77, responder, aircraft beacons, etc). The gearbox is pretty interesting including the use of power through the shaft of the rotating mechanism. The motors themselves were small and low amp draw for their time. Rowe Motors was sold (but continued production) and then went "toxic teets up". Whelen's motors had a distinct change in the late 1980s corresponding with both advances in small 12vdc motors and this:
cumulis.epa.gov
From the 1950s through the early 1960s, Rowe Industries, Inc. manufactured small electric motors and transformers on the 8-acre property. During this process, chlorinated solvents were used to degrease oil-coated metals. Waste solvents were discharged from two tanks in the building into cesspools or through a connecting pipe to an open field 75 to 100 feet east of the building. The building was destroyed by fire in 1962 and rebuilt that same year.
Rowe Industries, Inc. was purchased by Aurora Plastics, Inc. in the late 1960s, and by Nabisco, Inc. in the early 1970s. The manufacture of small electric motors and the use of solvents continued during this time. In 1980, the site was sold to Sag Harbor Industries, Inc., which currently uses the facility to manufacture electronic devices.
Groundwater contamination was discovered in the Sag Harbor area in 1983 when water samples collected from a private well by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services (SCDHS) revealed solvent contamination. As a result of these findings, the SCDHS and EPA conducted further investigations. The results of samples collected from 46 private wells and 21 observation wells in 1984 indicated that there was a volatile organic contaminant (VOC) plume in the groundwater that was about 500 feet wide and a half mile in length. Reports from former workers indicated that solvents were stored outside in a wooded area behind the facility; this area was determined to be the main source of the contamination.
