Andre, Did all of the Frisco U25Bs have a strobe light on the roof or was that on just few of them? The reason I ask is that I now have one of the Bowser U25Bs, and I was wondering how to detail it. William
William, While I cannot identify which U25Bs were equipped, the type of beacon used by the Frisco was not a strobe but a type of rotary beacon; the Prime Stratolight. They consisted of four fixed-position sealed beam bulbs aimed fore, aft, left and right. A circuit was used to step from one bulb to the next in a circular direction. No physical circular rotation or movement of the bulbs was involved.
It is referred to a rotary beacon. All the U25Bs where delivered with them. Starting with U25Bs and every thing that came after that, the Frisco ordered with a roof beacon from the factory. Later on they started ordering them with a roof beacon and an upper nose mounted Pyle National Gyrolite. By the mid 1960s anything that was not a F3B, F7B or F9B unit had a roof beacon. If you need one for you new U25B I recommend this product. http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/235-106 EDIT: William, if you or anyone else wants information about what units had gyrolights and roof beacons, contact me. I am not having luck finding the thread, but I remember everything.
The Details West part (RB-106) is pre-drilled for a 1.2mm bulb. The Miniatronics 1.2 mm, 1.5 v, 30 ma bulb is ideal for this application as well as replacement for the headlight bulbs. I have also used these bulbs for class lights on diesels. Update: A 0402 size warm white SMD LED will fit very easily into the RB-106. As a matter of fact, four can be made to fit into the lens if the lens is carefully drilled larger. This allows the four LEDs to fit facing outward in four directions and then be controlled by a micro-controller like the ATMEL AT-Tiny13.
