Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Jones mechanical Tachometer...one of the last maximum hand tachometers still around.....all the service and calibration info from the factory....part 1.

As some of you will have realised, perusing my weblog, The Velobanjogent was in the automotive, more specifically the motorcycle instrument business for over 30 years and during this time worked on just about all the various speedometers and tachometers that were used on vehicles.
I've done numerous posts on them from my personal memory and large archive of literature and photographs of automotive instruments....
I can't take them with me "when I leave this mortal coil" so I get great pleasure in sharing as much as I can....
What have I this time...?
The Jones Instrument Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut,USA were making speedometers from the start of the 20th century....
Pretty poor condition 1910 Jones speedometer....
Advert from the English "The Motorcycle" magazine, November 1908...

In 1986 I made a visit to Jones Corpn. in Stamford, CT after struggling with the repair and calibration of the racing tachometers I occasionally had pass through my instrument shop....so I was unsure what to expect when I went there, flying across the Pacific and the USA to visit them...they were more than helpful, no speedometer parts left and not prepared to sell parts for the maximum hand racing tachometers they still made, but quite happy to provide me with catalogues and the service/calibration sheets for these tachos....
Lets look for a start at a some catalogues from around the late 1960s
and 1980s....
Because of the number of pages in the repair/calibration manual I'll feature it in my next blog which as I'm off to Europe for 18days from the 21st March on another Velocette historical/archival foray will be mid April.....
The Velobanjogent is meeting up with some Velo friends in Germany and Holland and Dai Gibbison in the UK....
Pictured is myself with the guys with Gert Boll's rare mk.6 KTT Velocette in August 2013...
Gert, Carl,DQ,Heinz.....