woohoo! – they’e working
Vintage Eveready battery bicycle torch (L) and Australian army torch (R).
showing the rear mounting of the eveready
In a previous post, I showed an old Eveready army style torch that could be fitted to a bike light bracket. The batteries were supposed to be a No. 701A, however I couldn’t find any info on them online.
original packaging
I was playing around with a couple of “D” cell batteries yesterday and something jogged my memory. A quick search of my box of bits came up with these adaptors, and the original pack off one of them tells the story. Whatever the 701A was, these plastic and copper adapters were designed to upgrade the torch to take the new-fangled (sic) “D” cells. From the wording, it would seem that the old 701 battery came with the copper tracks on it, as a complete unit, and now it’s only necessary to buy the “D” cells once you have the adaptor.
The adaptor with “D” cells fitted is shown below :
the side copper track is for the bulb, the top one for the switch, which is screwed down to make contact
Here are some pictures showing how the working light fits two of my bikes :
speedwell “popular” loop frame
the loop frame speedwell has a bracket as part of the headset group
mounted on an accessory bracket on front hub – speedwell diamond frame
the same bike
front view
Next up, a working vintage battery powered tail-lamp…
a new recyclist 