I have a question, I just aquired a Fulton traffic Light reader and the lens itself looks to be not glass, but acrylic, or?.....did they make these both ways....the unit I have shows age.
Ive got the same one. Its pretty old & for sure some kind of plastic. Ive never seen one made of glass.
From what I have read, The original Fulton"Traffic Light Finders" were designed with glass, The Fulton flashlights made in 1939 used a glass lens also. HRP
For those of us who haven't seen them in use - What does the image of the light look like in these? Is it in the curved, ribbed portion? Thanks!
Not a real good image, but you can see the color change from red to green or green to yellow to red pretty easily. I have a glass one in my avatar truck because of the visor. I would think that plastic ones would suffer sun damage.
The image shows up in the lower, clear, partial moon shaped, portion. Look at mine at LF III. Mine looks just like the one in Joe Blow's pix, except that the "double marble" in mine is red. I just Googled these and if folks really get the asking prices they have gotten VERY expensive. Also, let me add, that "mine" isn't really mine. When I chopped the top on Clarence in 1992 my friend Joel loaned me this unit, which I installed in Clarence. Every 3-5 years I ask him if he wants it back and his response is always "no; it's being stored in a good place." I installed it in the hole left when I removed the switch for the vacuum wipers. I had installed Newport Engineering wiper motor set-up and no longer needed the vacuum switch. Had I drilled a new hole I would have placed it 3-4 inches away, but I'm happy enough with where it is. The one time they don't work very well is when the sun is pretty close to in line with the traffic light.
I tryed one years ago,kind of just to see if?? They worked. I never really got it in the right place maybe? But,nope didn't work for me. My 28A only has 1 inch lower then stock windshield. Sure, I could of been doing it wrong? But what I was thinking,was if it worked well,all those low chop jobs an drivers with crouch down bodys,from overly chopped tops could actually see a stop light ,with out having to stop 1/2 a block away from a red light.
So far I've found two Fultons in my buying travels. Both were plastic. One was at a garage sale. Actually, my wife found that one. When she saw the word "traffic" she brought it over to see if maybe it was some kind of car thingy I might like. It was priced at one dollar! I actually gasped.
Try to make a small mark with a stanley knife where it won't show. If you leave a mark is plastic, if the knife shoots off and slices your hand it,s glass Same if your not sure about taillight lenses.
I tried one for my chopped Buick. Didn't work very well so I removed it, which was easy as it was held on by a magnet.
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