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1970's Thorn Popular Pack - Refurbished
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Here you see a 1970's Thorn Popular Pack, finally put into service after being refurbished. In fact this is the first fixture that I've refurbished fully, it's taken more hours than I care to admit and hasn't been without issues!
It all stemmed from this which was rescued from someone's scrap heap & had been outside for quite some time. I was interested to see how well it'd clean up even though it looked knackered.
I ground off the worst of the rust from the spine with a fine flap disc on a grinder, I then treated the worst patches of rust with rust remedy & then after cleaning with degreaser, the spine had three coats of Zinc primer. I liked the colour of the primer so much, I then gave if three top coats of lacquer to create the finished product you see here.
I didn't spend long working on the cover as it turned out the edges had rotted so it had no strength left in it. I have another old Pop-pack that's not in use, so I robbed the cover from that and gave it a couple of coats of satin white and a couple of coats of lacquer.
After all this I decided to paint the choke, which I wasn't going to originally... That can be seen here
The screws in both lamp holders were rusted in and had to be carefully drilled out. Once this was done the plastics were cleaned up and all the brass contacts cleaned.
After all this the whole lot was put pack together and the unit was put on test.... then the refurbished choke developed an earth fault! That got replaced with a later style 'Thorn' choke and was put on test again... Then, whilst the fitting was sat over two saw-horses, one end fell off and landed heavily on the floor! Whilst it didn't bend the spine, it did crease the metal around the choke slightly.
The dam thing is now fitted, finally, in the corner of my garage above the work bench. I'm sure it will give many, many years of sterling service, even though it's inevitable the rust will come through again at some point
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