Strangest place you've found a light?

[CrownVic97]

My latest find today brought up this very question. I was browsing around Mac's Tools hardware store this afternoon, looking at assorted power terminals for a project I had an idea for, when I casually looked down and saw this sight on the bottom shelf:


FedSig FireBall II Strobe 1.jpg[/attachment:2dvctj28]


When I immediately saw the price, I said to myself "Whaaaaaat?!? $20?!? Mine!"


So it came with me back to my apartment .


FedSig FireBall II Strobe 2.jpg[/attachment:2dvctj28]


FedSig FireBall II Strobe 3.jpg[/attachment:2dvctj28]


FedSig FireBall II Strobe 4.jpg[/attachment:2dvctj28]


Not every day you get a $20 NIB 120V Fed Sig strobe beacon :mrgreen: .


So, that's my tale. Who else has found beacons/lightbars/sirens in a place you wouldn't even suspect them ?

 

[fedsig7]

Nice find! I found an Lp6000 at a flea market, wasnt really expecting to find a light bar there.

 

[Stendec]

So, that's my tale. Who else has found beacons/lightbars/sirens in a place you wouldn't even suspect them ?

Also a LP, with the crappy domes with clear inserts for the TDs and alleys, at an OMG clubhouse/whore house/meth lab. Had a property tag from a PD a couple time zones away. Apparently it had been stolen from them years earlier, they weren't concerned about getting it back.

 

[03crownvic]

I've been dealing with lighting for almost 30 years, so I have had various degrees of success during that time in locating different items. I was told about four like new lightbars that had been left in a little used gravel pit dump back in the late 1980s. They had been bought new and used for advertising on some fireworks stands over the 4th of July holiday and the fellow who owned and ran the stands was pretty well off financially. They must have been useless to him after he closed the stands and packed up his product so he just tossed them out. A buddy of mine knew a girl who had worked for him and he told me about them and I was able to find out where they were. I went and retrieved them and they all worked.


I've also had lightbars and beacon lights, and even a window mount radar unit, given to me by various small police and fire departments just for the asking several times, and I've found a couple of strobe beacons and two different types of lightbar domes on the shoulders and in the median of the interstate that were all reuseable. Plus, I've found working lightbars, beacons, two way radios, antennas, and assorted lighting parts (including sirens and speakers) over the years in dumpsters at various radio shops, city repair shops, and municipal public safety and public works departments, usually after they replaced some of their fleet with new vehicles. One of the recent finds a couple of years ago was a working TIR6 made in 2006 in like new shape that made a great little interior light in an empty Dashmiser housing.

 

[toon80]

I found a Dominion Auto Junior almost new taking dust in an old tool shed on a container that used to be a on a barge. Barge was steadily taking on water and this beacon was coupled to the bilge pump to advise the system was pumping out and if it was rotating for more than let's say 10 minutes, that the barge was technically sinking... :lol:


Barge was later sold, equipment taken off of it, and the beacon thrown in a corner... I saw it, asked for it, and left with it.

 

[CrownVic97]

I found four like new lightbars in a gravel pit dump back in the 1980s. They had been bought new and used for advertising on some fireworks stands over the 4th of July holiday and the fellow who owned and ran the stands was pretty well off financially and literally dumped them after he closed the stands and packed up his product. A buddy of mine knew a girl who had worked for him and he told me about them and I was able to find out where they were. BTW, they all worked.

Man, that'd make my day if I found something like that in an old field or something around here! What models of lightbars were they by chance?

....I've found a couple of strobe beacons and two different lightbar domes on the shoulders and in the median of the interstate that were all reuseable.

You reminded me of such a thing I came by when I was a pilot truck driver for a road construction outfit near my hometown during the summer of '08. I found this Whelen mini-Edge sitting in the bed of the truck I was using on the first day I reported to work and wondered where the heck it came from! I could only figure some poor volly FF lost it off the roof of their vehicle when it took flight and landed on the side of the road, where eventually the construction company found it. It was pretty much a basket case (I have no idea how to fix/work on strobe bars), but I put it inside the truck so it wouldn't get trashed any farther than it was. I did ask about taking it, and they told me they wanted to get amber lenses for it and use it in the future on another truck or heavy machinery. Oh well, I hated that job a lot, so they can have it :lol: !


Here's the cell phone pics of it:


Broken mini-Edge 1.jpg[/attachment:1f814456]


Broken mini-Edge 2.jpg[/attachment:1f814456]


Broken mini-Edge label.jpg[/attachment:1f814456]

 

[03crownvic]

Vic97, the bars at the gravel pit dump were the Gall's branded economy model LP6000s, but they were still very nice bars for the time period, as they had just been introduced by Code 3 in the early to mid 80s. Plus, they were still like new, as they had only been used for less than a couple of weeks on the fireworks stands and they guy who told me about them said they were new when they put them on the stands. I had to manually tote each of them several yards back to the access road from the isolated dump site, and as I was leaving the area with them all secured in my truck, I encountered some 4WD guys coming in to do some offroading who would have probably found them and mutilated them, so I was lucky to get there first.


Also, if the following event counts as a "strange place to find a light", it was the best one I ever had and I've told this story before on a couple of the previous boards. There was an occasion I had back in the late 1990s when I got a load of 16 MX7000 lightbars FREE. A local department had donated them, along with a bunch of their other surplus items, to another local department, but they weren't going to use the bars as they had already started updating their fleet with Edge bars. A buddy of mine was with the accepting agency and knew I dealt with lights, and he called me and asked if I was interested in any of them. I said sure, but don't tease me with them since I can't afford to get that many at once. He said if I wanted all of them, don't worry about buying them since they were gonna be "gimmes", and he was kind enough to bring all of them over to my place in exchange for me covering his lunch. All but 2 of them worked perfectly, with only a bulb or two needing replacing in some of them, and the remaining two had been partially gutted for their parts. There were also lots of assorted parts included the mix, including several new lower deck filters and a few upper deck domes that were still in the factory styrofoam wrappers that had apparently been kept for spares. It took awhile, but I eventually sold all of them, mostly on eBay. It was while they were still fairly popular, so I was getting around $150-200 each.


That was the absolute best occasion I've ever had with "finding" lights.

 

[EVModules]

Rotating anti collision aircraft light under a car. Apparently the kid had aspirations to be a pilot and enjoyed cruising down the road with that thing on.


Top that!

 

[jdh]

A fully decked out Mars SpectraSystem at a fire muster. Paid somewhere around $50-$60 for it. I had NIB clear domes for it.


I also got an all strobe SVP Impluse 2000 at the same event for $25. Both were in mint condition.


Scored a Whelen 5200 beacon(the same that PA troopers used back in the day) for $50 shipped on ebay. It was in almost perfect condition. The seller could not spell.

 

[FedSigFan]

A precursor to my lightbar obsession... I found a four way traffic light in a ditch when I was a kid, the kind that hangs from a cable in the middle of an intersection. It was missing some of the glass lenses and pretty beat up. These things are huge, and heavy, but I dragged it home and was so proud when my dad helped me wire up a few of the bulbs to come on :lol: .

 

[MPD 818]

Found my strobehawk under a rusty shed in about 12 inches of dust behind a bunch of junk car parts at the back of a tow truck impound/junk yard. Traded a busted up streethawk for it. The owner of the tow company bought the strobehawk thinking it had rotators. He found out it was strobes and set it back at the back of the shed and forgot about it for 10 years till I stumbled across it one day during extrication training. Now it is cleaned up and looking good in my house.

 

[EL1998P71]

I got a 9M Amber strobe with traffic advisor and controller from a local terminal supply seller.


They don't stock lightbars. mostly terminals, wires and lightbulbs. They wanted $900 for it.


I talked them down to $250. The lightbar had the Austin Electronic's tag on it insted of whelen

 

[cmb56]

For me it must be that I got two unused red 24 Volt Marchal 340/216.


I got the first one from a work mate that had it in a locker and several years later I got the second one from another work mate that also had one in a locker.


They had got them years ago when our stock was cleared from old unused equipment.


These lights are from the '60s and was used on some emergency vehicles in Sweden.


They where not so common in the '60s compared to the use of Bosch and Hella lights.


These Marchal lights are very rare today.


Why my work had these in stock I still do not know.


Our fire truck at that time where 12 Volt.


If someone is curious, I work in a paper mill.