Yankee-Deitz Lightbar w/ Lecttic Lites 360 strobes

[K9Vic]

I picked up some old Yankee-Deitz Lightbar today that had two outbound 360 strobes and fixed inbound PAR36 f/r flashers (Does not rotate). Did not think that Yankee-Deitz made a strobe bar and when I finally got the lights home I saw that the strobes were Lectric Lite Astro Flash II (Model LL800- B) . I am wondering if Lectric Lites made these customer out of the Yankee-Deitz Lightbar, or the city did this to add strobes. I doubt Yankee-Deitz did this, but maybe to compete with Whelen and used Lectic Lites for the strobes. They also have 100watt speakers, but not sure of the model as I did not remove one yet.


Anyways I thought this was interesting and thought I would share with ELB my find.

 

[Pimp]

That is rather.... strange. Looks like they barely fit in there.

 

[stansdds]

Yankee did put strobes in their bars, either one or two on each side, but they were not Lectric Lites strobes. I'll wager the last owner of the bar replaced broken rotators with these strobes.

 

[CrownVic97]

Looks pretty cool, though. Nice score!

 

[Richard P]

I like the looks of that! always liked the shape of the yankee bars. need one for the collection!

 

[03crownvic]

Here's the story on that. I obtained several of those Frankensteined bars, along with some Aerodynics, at the Shreveport LA city auction back in the early 90s when they were converting their entire fleet to MX7000 bars. I knew they weren't original, so I checked with their city shop, and spoke at length with the shop foreman. He said there was a local police supply dealer that sold Lectric Lites and they had offered strobe conversion kits to the many departments in the area that still used those Yankee type bars. The dual sealed beam rotators in those bars had flimsy plastic gears that were notorious for going out, and apparently, many departments didn't have the funds on hand to purchase replacement bars when that happened. IMO, they could have easily cannibalized working rotators from their other bars, but I imagine the failure rate was becoming so frequent, it would be an ongoing chore. The dealer would contract out to convert the bars from rotators to strobes, but there was a different conversion setup originally offered, where freestanding strobe tubes mounting inside small clear inner optic lenses were used, with the 2 head power supply installed inside the bar. Those were the identical setups used in Pimp's favorite Lectric Lites LL300 Ranger bars. However, the strobes were not very bright since they were only single flash, so they started using independent strobe beacons instead in their later conversions. Shreveport unloaded all of their Frankensteined Yankee bars, along with some Aerodynics that had remote Visibeam spotlights on top, at that auction. I picked up around 50 of both types of bars for around $400 and did quite well with reselling them. Heck, I got $200 for just one of the Aeros from a local fire department! I still have one of the Yankee/Dietz bars that had the freestanding strobe setups.


K9vic, since you are in Ft. Worth, I'll bet your pictured blue/blue bar came from a small department in east Texas that had one of those conversions done, since Shreveport used red/blue domes on their bars. However, one of your domes looks much better than the other, so maybe it was converted from a red/blue bar. BTW, you said you got several of those bars, so do any of them have a clear front cutout and rear amber cutout in a red dome? If so, those were probably from bars that Bossier City LA used, as I never saw any other area departments with cutouts in their domes. BTW, I still have several red domes with those cutouts.

 

[stansdds]

So basically, I win the prize for figuring out what happened to that bar?


What did I win? What did I win?


Seriously, with older, self contained light bars, replacing broken sealed beam rotators (pretty common with the Signal-Stat/Dietz/Yankee design) with either independent motored, halogen bulb single rotators or strobes is a relatively inexpensive fix and extends the life of the bar.

 

[fedsig7]

Nice find.

 

[03crownvic]

Stan, you win bragging rights for speculation since you were the first to post. However, I gotta win something for the explanation.....

 

[stansdds]

I think we should each get a jelly doughnut.

 

[03crownvic]

I'll take a chocolate covered creme filled eclair instead............

 

[K9Vic]

Here's the story on that. I obtained several of those Frankensteined bars, along with some Aerodynics, at the Shreveport LA city auction back in the early 90s when they were converting their entire fleet to MX7000 bars. I knew they weren't original, so I checked with their city shop, and spoke at length with the shop foreman. He said there was a local police supply dealer that sold Lectric Lites and they had offered strobe conversion kits to the many departments in the area that still used those Yankee type bars. The dual sealed beam rotators in those bars had flimsy plastic gears that were notorious for going out, and apparently, many departments didn't have the funds on hand to purchase replacement bars when that happened. IMO, they could have easily cannibalized working rotators from their other bars, but I imagine the failure rate was becoming so frequent, it would be an ongoing chore. The dealer would contract out to convert the bars from rotators to strobes, but there was a different conversion setup originally offered, where freestanding strobe tubes mounting inside small clear inner optic lenses were used, with the 2 head power supply installed inside the bar. Those were the identical setups used in Pimp's favorite Lectric Lites LL300 Ranger bars. However, the strobes were not very bright since they were only single flash, so they started using independent strobe beacons instead in their later conversions. Shreveport unloaded all of their Frankensteined Yankee bars, along with some Aerodynics that had remote Visibeam spotlights on top, at that auction. I picked up around 50 of both types of bars for around $400 and did quite well with reselling them. Heck, I got $200 for just one of the Aeros from a local fire department! I still have one of the Yankee/Dietz bars that had the freestanding strobe setups.

K9vic, since you are in Ft. Worth, I'll bet your pictured blue/blue bar came from a small department in east Texas that had one of those conversions done, since Shreveport used red/blue domes on their bars. However, one of your domes looks much better than the other, so maybe it was converted from a red/blue bar. BTW, you said you got several of those bars, so do any of them have a clear front cutout and rear amber cutout in a red dome? If so, those were probably from bars that Bossier City LA used, as I never saw any other area departments with cutouts in their domes. BTW, I still have several red domes with those cutouts.

Thanks for the info, that does explain why they are hacked with Lectric Lite strobes. I got 8 bars and only two of them had complete all blue lenses undamaged, then a few with broken domes, but all are solid blue with no cut outs. The lightbars are from the city of Fort Worth, they have speakers in them and doubt they were on police or fire vehicles as I have never seen all blue on either. May have been public works like Irving with all blue lightbars. The speakers may have just been part of the standard package. They all had quick disconnects ends, a few had the plugs and gutter hooks. I will restore the two good ones and probably strip out the strobes and sell them as LL800 for collectors as they are in great shape being inside a lightbar.

 

[dalehollowrescue]

Hey, the Albany Police Dept, in Ky. used a 4 strobe yankee bar for years, they only had 2 cars a burgandy and white nova, with the yankee strobe and a blue and white cv with 2 federal signal 2 bulb rotators. I have asked for years for pictures and can't find any yet but I will someday and i'll post them, odd set up of cars and lights here many years ago.

 

[03crownvic]

K9Vic, do all of your bars have independent strobe beacons or do any of them have the freestanding 8 pin round base strobe tubes mounted under small clear optic lenses? The freestanding tubes were the original conversions and the beacon setup was the updated conversion. Either way, I'll wager that the dealer that did the Shreveport conversions did those Ft. Worth bars too. They probably had a salesperson who traveled to peddle those conversion kits and Ft. Worth was in their territory, since both places are within easy driving distance. If not, I wonder if Shreveport donated a bunch of their bars to Ft. Worth, or vice versa? Even though the S'port shop guy said outright they had all of their bars converted, I'm curious because most of the bars I got had the speakers, clamps, etc. left on them too, but they had red/blue domes. There were also a couple that had clear and amber domes, that were probably used on public works vehicles since blue is LE only here (at least for two more weeks, right Pimp?)

 

[texaspoliceofficer]

I picked up some old Yankee-Deitz Lightbar today that had two outbound 360 strobes and fixed inbound PAR36 f/r flashers (Does not rotate). Did not think that Yankee-Deitz made a strobe bar and when I finally got the lights home I saw that the strobes were Lectric Lite Astro Flash II (Model LL800- B) . I am wondering if Lectric Lites made these customer out of the Yankee-Deitz Lightbar, or the city did this to add strobes. I doubt Yankee-Deitz did this, but maybe to compete with Whelen and used Lectic Lites for the strobes. They also have 100watt speakers, but not sure of the model as I did not remove one yet.

Anyways I thought this was interesting and thought I would share with ELB my find.

______________


We got those here in Ft Worth in the mid 1980s had kept some of them through the late 1990's. They originally had rotators in them, but the things kept stripping the gears out so to stop replacing gears and moving part - the city fleet manager went down the street to Letric Lights (a local ameber light company) and starting buying single flash strobes to put in them so there would be no more moving parts to replace. Let me tell you, THEY SUCKED, especially during the day. We could get no one to get out of the way and of course they were single flash strobes so there was no pattern to them or etc. they were horrible, honestly. Also, the fog light that you see mounted in the middle, well thats exactly what it is. We complained that everyone else around Ft Worth except us were getting bars with alley lights and take down lights and etc.; and well, you guessed it - their answer was to buy a bunch of fog lights and mount one under the speaker housing on these Yankee Dietz light bars. We finally moved to the jetsonic and eventually the jetstream around 1999/2000. It was an adventure working under them ill tell you - especially in that in court - it was a defense to prosecution that a defendent could state that he/she didnt see us! We had to let them have that one because honestly unless it was at night, they couldnt!

 

[texaschad25]

I have a small U.B.I. (Useful Bit of Information) for you about your old Yankee lightbar. The city of Fort Worth actually DID use those lightbars on their police cars in the 80's. I remember that Fort Worth had some Chevy Malibu's with them and they also had them on some of their squarebody crown vics. I live in Cleburne, which is about 30 miles south of Fort Worth. My dad, who is a retired Cleburne officer, had these lightbars on his cars for many,many years. They were longer bars and had the red/blue lenses. I remember as a kid, that when I would ride with him from time to time, the rotators in those lightbars would squeak and grind like crazy (metal on metal kinda grind) !! It was loud enough that you could actually hear it over the police scanner when a officer was talking over the radio. I also remember all of the Cleburne unit bars having rotators on the outside and strobes on the inside. I have a picture (somewhere) of one of his old Dodge Diplomats with that lightbar on it. I also have a picture of a 86 Texas DPS dodge diplomat with the Red/Blue lenses with the clear takedown cutouts on the front of the lenses. I actually have that pic on my computer but dont know how to get it onto this post..


After retiring those bars, they went with a slantfaced bar from Lectric Lites. They were ugly as sin but they worked. A few years later, they were replaced with a much better looking bar from Lectric Lites. They actually resembles a Smith and Wesson bar. And to date, some of Fort Worth public utilities actually use this bar from Lectric Lites. I have heard that Lectric Lites is no longer in business..


Until next time . . . . i will go back under my rock for awhile..


Chad