The Siren

While we were visiting Ray in the hospital the previous month, Erin's cousin Bob mentioned that he had an old chrome siren in his garage, and if we could use it on the boat we were welcome to it.  I accepted Bob's offer, and a few weeks later when Ray was regaining strength from his surgery, Bob, Ray and I went to the boat to show Bob all we'd been doing, accept the siren and go out for lunch.

The siren was made by Federal Sign & Signal Corporation of Chicago, and was a model EP.  It's a 12 volt model - the old fashioned kind that runs on a motor - not the digital versions of today.  It was missing the front faceplate, and was sporting a homemade bracket.  It probably last saw service bolted underneath a fender or somewhere out of sight.

I did some research on the web, and eventually found a photo of the siren in its entirety.  It doesn't have the typical grill faceplate - it has a really nice bell that would look great next to our Buell air horns.  This is a really good time in our process of repowering the boat to add this siren, because we already have the headliner off and ceiling exposed for routing wires and mounting the siren on the roof.

I shopped Ebay and came across a pair of these sirens at auction.  They were in pretty sorry looking condition and one had a cracked housing, but they were complete with bells and original stanchions.  They were also 6 volt versions, but what I really wanted was the bell and a stanchion.  I bid on these and won them, for a bit more than I wanted to pay.  But, there is enough there that even after I claim my bell and stanchion, I can clean up or have chromed the remaining pieces and hopefully sell a great looking siren on Ebay for at least as much as I paid for the pair.

Erin and I both put some elbow grease into polishing the bell and stanchion.  There's also a screen inside the bell with these horns.  Ray made a wood platform for the siren, and also did some more polishing with a wheel to really buff it out.

We mounted the platform to the roof of the salon, between the air horns, and have wires going to it from the helm.  It'll be all connected by the time we close up the ceiling.  It's had a couple coats of undercoat, and will get a finish coat when we repaint the top. 

 

The siren took center stage between the air horns, and I think it looks right at home.

Maybe we'll enter next year's Opening Day Parade so we can sound off with both horns and siren while parading down the cut!