Homebrewed Electricity > Wind

Freelites

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peterhannan:
Apparently, according to my father who was born in 1927, Lucas had actually stopped production of the a900 generator & had to be talked into making them again. I have a couple of new ones & were told they had yet to be converted. The old machine for rewinding the field coils was still in our shop until 1974. After the generators were converted, either 12 or 32 volt, they were fitted with a plate stamped with a model no. This was either "d" for direct drive or "g" for a geared model, most geared models being 32 volt. Behind the letter prefix was the year designation.

The photo sent in by Flux is a "D36" the year being the design date, not date of manufacture. There were many different models, the earliest photo I have is from a newspaper ad about 1932 but the exact year they started production is not known.

Generally the models with wooden props were post war & the furling system & offset pivot to help prevent overspeed made them the most reliable models. I have a "D46" up & running & it works very well, the only problem being it needs an automatic overspeed brake which I am working on at present. Hoping this has been of some interest. Regards Peter.

Flux:
Thanks Peter.

The main use of the A900 dynostarter was for the Hotchkiss engine for the Bullnose Morris car and that may have been out of production by 1927.
It is interesting that the dynamos you used were converted dynostarters. many were converted by home builders over a long period of time and I converted one about 40 years ago. The results of the conversion are not as good as the armature that Lucas must have built specially for the Freelite as produced here, maybe you got the later dynamos when Lucas took up production of the Freelite.
The original armature was designed to accept the heavy winding needed for a starter and used open slots. The later dymamo for the Freelite used semi-closed slots and had double the number of commutator segments, there seems to have been a straight core and a skew core version. At some time the field poles seem to have been changed slightly but a Freelite armature will actually fit into an A900 body. There was a slight change to the brush boxes.
I have only seen direct drive versions, I am not aware that Lucas produced a geared unit. Direct drives were originally 12v but later a 24v version became available.
I agree that the change to wooden prop must have taken place round the war years, I have only met two with the aluminium prop and I can probably remember back to about 1945.
Thanks for confirming the date of design of the D36, that settles an argument I had with a friend some years ago when he claimed he had a 1928 unit.
What is the difference on your D43 model, does that have the later furling scheme with the dynamo pivoted on the head?
I will post some pictures of the difference between the A900 dynostarter and the Lucas produced freelite dynamo as used in the uk when I get a chance.
Flux

Flux:
Here are the pictures.
First is Freelite dynamo with cast drive end and tapered shaft.



Next is A900R dynostarter with splined shaft and steel drive end plate.





Next is A900R rewound as wind generator about 40 years ago.



Finally A900R and straight slotted Freelite armatures.


You can also see from the pictures that the Freelite dynamo have a single screw pole fixing, the A900R has two screws, the pole forgings are slightly different.
Later Freelite dynamos have the commutator end casting slightly modified to incorporate a pair of capacitors and a choke for radio interference suppression.
Flux

Nando:
HECK, I WAS "RUNG"
I thought that FREELITES , were some light fixtures that we could get for free.
Nando

peterhannan:
Thanks Flux for your interesting photos & info. I have never seen the a900 generator in it's original form. The armature with the twisted segments seems to have been quite common on the early freelites I have seen, straight ones being the later. The brand new generators that came in boxes were always painted red & I was told they were all 24 volt although I am not sure how true that was, I did not see any of this stuff until 1971 & there was only two or three people left in the place that knew anything about them. There was only a scattering of old parts, generators etc. laying about when I decided to assemble a freelite for myself, having only seen them on the top of farmhouses from a distance. When I came across the original drawings for the "D46" that made it easier to locate the parts needed to complete the thing but being an apprentice in a place full of grumpy old blokes it was very hard to get any help as they thought I was wasting my time.

   As far as I can make out from photos from the U.K. it looks as if only the "D36" & "D46" models were produced by lucas although Hannan's sold quite a few of the geared plants in the Pacific. They also produced a 6volt model but this was fairly early, about 1934 or earlier.

   The "d46" & "g47" were the pivoting dynamo models where the furling handle lifted the tail up & a rod pushed the generator around sideways. The "G47" used the same tail & head assy. but had a large gearbox in the dynamo pivot & used two of the wooden props on top of each other. I have several of these which are 32 volt but my dad said they used to shake quite a bit in high winds so I have not tried one. The Hannans Freelites were mainly all 12 volt or 32 volt, I don't know of any 24 volt models produced here. Apologies if I have bored you with all this drivel.

                                                         Regards Peter

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