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AEI Fleetwood - Gear layout As mentioned, the gear layout has been absolutely rammed in, as a result the wiring whilst neat, is somewhat of a total rats nest. During the rewire I worked to tidy this up as much as possible, but despite my efforts to improve starting, only one tube will start reliably. With massive thanks to Dez, he worked with me to test each individual circuit to figure out why and what could be causing this bad starting issues, and we came to the conclusion that three of the QS transformers are dead, as well as one ballast too, so with half of the components having failed, now leaves me a huge challenge to try and source some of these elusive replacement parts to keep the lantern 100% original, as I'm sure you'll agree is paramount with a lantern of this vintage and complete originality.

AEI Fleetwood - Gear layout

As mentioned, the gear layout has been absolutely rammed in, as a result the wiring whilst neat, is somewhat of a total rats nest. During the rewire I worked to tidy this up as much as possible, but despite my efforts to improve starting, only one tube will start reliably. With massive thanks to Dez, he worked with me to test each individual circuit to figure out why and what could be causing this bad starting issues, and we came to the conclusion that three of the QS transformers are dead, as well as one ballast too, so with half of the components having failed, now leaves me a huge challenge to try and source some of these elusive replacement parts to keep the lantern 100% original, as I'm sure you'll agree is paramount with a lantern of this vintage and complete originality.

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Filename:DSC00766.JPG
Album name:Dave / Control gear
Filesize:4276 KiB
Date added:15 Aug, 2024
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Slyspark   [15 Aug, 2024 at 10:29 PM]
Might be an interesting task - probably more so with the 30w ballast than the QS transformers....
Dave   [15 Aug, 2024 at 10:36 PM]
Part of me is wondering whether I could open and gut that ballast, and put the windings of a more modern ballast inside and repot it with some resin
Slyspark   [15 Aug, 2024 at 10:41 PM]
I guess you don't lose anything by trying, given it's dead anyway. I'd probably just mount the new one inside, minus the resin, as not being designed to be potted, it might overheat if you do drown it in resin.
Beta 5   [15 Aug, 2024 at 11:05 PM]
Nice old gear set! Same about the failed components though. Sounds like opening the failed ballast would be the best bet, you could likely cut down the base plate of say a Tridonic EC30 and get the core to fit in there, could always remove the terminal block too and solder some wires to it to connect to the original ballast case terminal block?
Ash   [17 Aug, 2024 at 05:06 PM]
Dont cut up the originals, keep them as is (failed) for show pieces

Just wire the new Tridonics in

Or leave the originals on the tray, disconnected, and wire the input to the entie luminaire with multicore cable (the sort of cable commonly used for industrial control, grey outer with multiple black insulated numbered conductors) from an external gear box which contains the actual working gear. You'll need 10 circuit wires for 4 lamps (Neutral shared) + Earth

Maybe less if you can make use of the original gear. (Including the dead QS - The primaries are probably bad, but the secondaries might be ok - in this case it will still work as an ELV to ELV isolation transformer). But if most of it is failed perhaps the remaining parts are on their way out anyway

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