CLM Siren Restoration

[Hippie]

Restoration is coming along nicely, a lot of hours into it. Control box needs a little help still but I'm almost ready for paint. Can anyone suggest a material too cover the brush holes, seems to me the metal cover is just meant to hold a proper cover in place.
HIPPIE

[CanadianTbolt1003]

Awesome! Can you do pictures of the control panel insides?

[clarksburg_1000t]

Well, yet another noisy bench grinder.
interesting chopper designs
-the guy who knows nothing about CLM.

[ArxCyberwolf]

Nice Type 5261 you've got there! I'm hoping your restoration goes well!

[Hippie]

Haven't got my electrical engineer degree but think I've got most of it figured out, not sure if any of its restorable, most of my buddies say why would you but I'm inclined to say why wouldn't you.

[CanadianTbolt1003]

Thanks! It's nice to see an original CLM control unit intact. These controllers have a feature where you could have the siren idle at around 60 to 75 rpm to keep the motor from freezing up in the wintertime which is what that knob that points to 60 RPM means. I can't wait to see this siren all restored and painted, keep up the good work!

[HDN]

Thanks! It's nice to see an original CLM control unit intact. These controllers have a feature where you could have the siren idle at around 60 to 75 rpm to keep the motor from freezing up in the wintertime which is what that knob that points to 60 RPM means.

That's pretty neat - I had no idea that control was even a thing for sirens at all! I guess it doesn't get that cold where I live in NY.

[Blasty]

Neat!

I'm more fascinated by that old open-style contactor. Can't quite tell what's going on there. Looks like what appears to be a pair of normally-closed contacts (that's odd) and another pair in parallel on the other end underneath... something?

Have ya reverse-engineered the schematic yet? Curious nerds want to know!

EDIT - looking closer, perhaps I answered my own question - making some guesses about where those wires are headed. I assume the normally-closed side is energizing the low-speed circuit via those fuses when the siren is "off" maybe?

And your friend says "why would you?" Because preserving history, for one thing! I restored much worse once, a kit-built radio that is 100 years old this year, after coming *this close* to scrapping it for parts and pitching the rest. The thing apparently was tossed in a barn for some 75-ish years before I got it as by ~1928 it would have already been woefully obsolete. That control unit appears a pleasure to work on by comparison!

[Blasty]

I would like to add, if you are having any trouble with that control unit:

If you can trace out what is going on with the in-tact wiring to the best of your ability, I could take a crack at figuring out what to do with the rest of the cut wires to get this thing operating. A large part of my job involves industrial control circuits like this, albeit with more modern components. The concepts are the same.

It would be helpful to peek under the black thing (cover?) that has the "18" and "19" labels on it to confirm what I suspect is under there (normally-open contact pair?), if it is easily removed.

A digital multimeter will be handy for checking things. A cheapie will suffice if you don't have one already.

Assuming the contactor and relay coils are still good (the multimeter will tell you) everything is likely still in working order. The contacts on these devices may benefit from an easy cleaning but otherwise there isn't much there to go wrong.

Overall looks like a very achievable restoration project given the skills you've already shown with the siren itself.