"Hopeless" Dominion Auto Juniors

[Richard P]

I picked up an Old Dominion auto junior off a friend, which was horribly butchered, the rotator motor mount had been replaced (cut out and another added in) the reflector had been swapped out for a piece of plastic and the rest of the base brutally painted and siliconed. I managed to breathe some life into it, luckily I had a spare reflector assembly. I painted the base also, buffed out the first generation shade of dark blue lens and it came out pretty damn good!


Second one I just finished today, looking to keep myself busy in some very serious self inflicted personal problems, I really cant leave home at this point, cant see my lovely girlfriend, so I have to keep occupied with projects (hoping to have a tomar heliobe to build soon, keep an eye out for that, just need to pay for it) and avoid drinking. I got this rough and dirty DA Junior from Antoine the other day, came out nice for the collection, took a day to do.


Now im up to 7 DA juniors, 3 4 beam flat tops, 5 2 beam flat tops, 4 round tops, 2 intermediate revolving 2 beam beacons, singe rotating reflector intermediate beacon, 2 volunteers, 2 4 way alternating flashers, one senior strobe and one intermediate strobe. along with 1 DA turbobeam 22 and a 15, both H155 watt rotators

 

[dmathieu]

Way to go! On all counts!

 

[Skip Goulet]

Someone really did a "number" on that poor light. Ditto what Dan says. Back in 1970 I was given a Jr. Beacon Ray that would light up but wouldn't rotate. Since the days of the late John Dorgan we've learned that there was a little gear that caused that, and J.D. eventually came up with a source for the gear. But back then we didn't know that and figured that the poor light was simply doomed.


Our REACT team had just been given an old station wagon ambulance that belonged to the local racetrack. We had been their first aid team for some time. Poor old beast only had a short-skirted Federal 17 beacon on top: period! I had bought an old 6-volt Mars DL8 light. This was the forerunner of the now-famous 888 light. The difference was that the DL8 had a bulb/reflector ass'y rather than a sealed beam, and only had the single figure-8 pattern; not the triple "wobble". Our dilema was how to use that 6-volt light on the 12-volt car w/o causing harm. We removed the old 6-volt bulb and put the bulb from my Jr. Beacon Ray in its place. The juniors used the large 1019 bulb (100 c.p.) compared to the smaller 1185? 50 c.p. bulb that came with the DL8. We decided to take our chances with using the Mars light as it was with the big 1019 bulb added. Worked just fine and we used the light for many years w/o harming the old 6-volt motor. The light oscillated much faster than it would've, but the old beast lasted and lasted!

 

[Wailer]

I had an amber one with a chrome base, and from what I could remember that halogen bulb got pretty hot. The neatest thing I can remember doing with that light was hooking it up to my model railroad power pack and using the variable DC throttle to control the speed and brightness of the light. It looked pretty far out with a dimmer bulb and a slower rotating reflector.

 

[toon80]

I'm happy you received the Junior I sent you


It came out nice!


A bit of story on that light: it was used as a signal on a rusty old barge that was always slowly taking in water. When the high water level float switch flicked on, so did this light, indicating the bilge pump needed to be switched on in order to prevent the barge from sinking.