invacar LightBulbFun's Invacar & general ramble thread, index on page 1, survivors lists on Pages 24/134 & AdgeCutler's Invacar Mk12 Restoration from Page 186 onwards, still harping on...

[auntiemaryscanary]

3 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

had a trip out in the VDP yesterday,

twas a fairly spur of the moment trip

*calls lighting wholesaler, talks to owner of company with hope of arranging visit in the near future*

"Hello I am guy with the Invacar Three Wheeler, (that gets me through introductions really quickly it turns out LOL) i'd like to come back and relieve you of all your 8ft fluorescent tubes"

"well I am usually in Mondays and Thursdays"

*sees its Monday*

"so, uhh can I come now?"

"Yeah sure"

"Great I am on my way!"

since I actually had 5 minutes with the car to myself this time I had a bit of investigate and figured out why the heater control was clacking/clicking and otherwise not seemingly doing much

seems how the cable attaches has failed in some fashion, not sure if some plastic bit has broken off or it just needs clipping back in place, but at least the heater control under the bonnet is quite accessible so can be operated via that if needed or someone can grab the end of the cable under the dash with some pliers or mole-grips or such!, worked my though London, weather was nice and actually managed to get some music cued up on my bluetooth speaker, not quite sure people expect Gorilaz (the self titled album) to be originating from something of such old giffer-ness LOL, but made for a relatively nice cruise, exhaust makes a good note too when you boot it through an underpass/bridge with the window down  

 eventually arrived at the aforementioned wholesaler and releived them of many lamps and tubes

including all the 8ft tubes I wanted which I could not get last time (as 6ft's the limit in REV!), sadly tho the quite rare Hungarian made GE 8ft tubes that my friend in Lithuania wanted had sold between then and now, so I feel bad that I missed them, but I at least managed to get all the other 8ft  tubes I wanted, including a nice bundle of Thorn 125W 8ft tubes in Kolorite, which is very rare/special (its a special high CRI deluxe colour that notably was approved by the DHSS for hospital use)

made my way home along the embankment and one of the bridges,

@egg

and then finally home! managed to nab the spot in front of REV again  

almost 41 miles covered, not long to go before she rolls over to 84000!

 

 

also not pictured was the one massive fucking lightbulb I got that took up most of the space in the boot  

"how big do you want you reflector lightbulb"

"Yes"

Did you remember a 4ft R10 for me?

[LightBulbFun]

1 hour ago, auntiemaryscanary said:

Did you remember a 4ft R10 for me?

this 4ft R10 tube? of course  twas the very last one they had (that I could see, they did however have a whole bunch of 5ft T8 ones left)  I checked it over and theres no light leakage from the regular white tube contained within (which a Polish MCFE 40W T12 3500K White Halophosphate tube from February 2002

(its a much deeper red in real life, also extremely dim, but I suppose it would be being a darkroom filtered tube !)

[auntiemaryscanary]

50 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

this 4ft R10 tube? of course  twas the very last one they had (that I could see, they did however have a whole bunch of 5ft T8 ones left)  I checked it over and theres no light leakage from the regular white tube contained within (which a Polish MCFE 40W T12 3500K White Halophosphate tube from February 2002

(its a much deeper red in real life, also extremely dim, but I suppose it would be being a darkroom filtered tube !)

Bloody brilliant @LightBulbFun. Much appreciated.

Yes it's weird viewing a relatively powerful tube that is dim. They do their job well in a photographic darkroom - which is allowing you to see* whilst making prints on light sensitive paper. Absolutely no use for undeveloped film, that has to be handled in complete darkness.

I'll send you a pm about payment and postage unless you fancy a trip up the M1 or M11/A1 to Nottm

[LightBulbFun]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

What the heck is going on with the support structure in that beast? 

its just as much of a mind fuck in real life TBH! but typical of these Iwasaki lamps and their clones, for some reason they really wanted to avoid putting the unusual support knob/dimple on glass to support the frame from the topside, so instead built an elaborate structure to support it all from the neck/stem end of the lamp

regular sized lightbulb for comparison!

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Also kind of curious as to the intended use case for it...guessing printing or something?  Non fluorescent merc seemingly pretty recent (and in this country) just intrigues me.

so this is where things get interesting, because I think it so happened to be what it is by happenstance, as you know normally non-fluorescent mercury lamps are very rare here, but I suspect someone went to venture and said "we want mercury reflector lamps" Venture never made mercury lamps themselves and so Venture went to a Chinese supplier and they just spat this out for them, they never explicitly asked for a phosphor (fluorescent) coated version so they never got one!  as you will note on the box someone after the fact sharpie'd "MBFR" but thats of course wrong its got no F! its not fluorescent and for the longest time it was listed as a 1000W MBFR on CP-lighting's website (and you can still find it on there by that term, they do still have 3 more), so I think it was ordered without someone knowing any better. (MBFR is British nomenclature for High pressure Mercury (MB) with fluorescent (F) coating, in Reflector (R) form, the U or /U meaning universal burning position.

I have seen these Venture Mercury reflector lamps in both Wide Beam Phosphor coated and Narrow beam (non fluorescent)  Phosphor-less versions, however both types where JIS spec/clones rather then the European style of Mercury reflector lamp which has a Titanium dioxide reflector instead,  here is a Phosphor coated version https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/297772832721 and they have had the same venture part number both phosphor and non phosphor versions, so I think not even venture was quite aware of the difference/significance and the whole non-fluorescent thing was un intentional by Venture

note how venture show a generic image of a British/European Titanium Dioxide reflector MBFR and note that their "MBFR1000W/E40" has the same 00226 order code as my non phosphor coated lamp! tho notably the description text/catalog entry is different

as alluded to, Iwasaki was the originator of this design, (or if not Iwasaki, certainly from Japan) and then the Chinese cloned them, tho not normally sold here, they are very much an Asian market design/thing (also Common in Australia where Iwasaki had a fair foot hold) Iwasaki did offer them in the UK but they where very much an outlier in that regard, in the same way only Iwasaki offered the 40W mercury lamp in the UK (and all the other normally Japanese market only lamps they offered here as well)

and yes your reading the dimensions right, this thing really is almost a metric foot in diameter! 

heres an example of one of the Chinese clones 

Iwasaki produced both Phosphor and un-phosphor coated versions, as the phosphor also affected the beam profile, so for flood lighting where you want a diffuse wide beam may as well do that with a phosphor coating and improve Colour rendering and CRI at the same time, but where you need a tight spot beam you dont want a diffusing phosphor layer, hence the un-colour corrected versions

not my picture (borrowed from Globe Collector hope he does not mind!) but its a good comparison of some proper British GEC 1000W MBF/R's the 2 smaller white ones and a collection of Genuine Iwasaki 1000W Mercury lamps (also phosphor coated, note the white coating on the inside reflective surface vs my Venture lamp, Iwasaki did also produce a non phosphor coated version but I have never seen a picture of one of those they would of looked very similar to my venture lamp)

all this is why I never actually bought one from the Website and waited till I could see what was what in person! as I knew Venture never made their own mercury lamps and so what would show up would very much depend on which lamp they decided to copy/outside supplier/OEM they used, and when I saw what it was, even if just a Chinese clone, I still had to get it! I have always wanted one of these massive JIS Spec Mercury reflector lamps *especially* in non phosphor coated form

 

so with all that said hopefully one  can also see that while for sure "oooh thats big and shiny lightbulb" was a fair part of why I had to get it, hopefully one can also see the much more nuanced details/considerations that go into my purchasing decisions as well  

[MT606]

1 hour ago, LightBulbFun said:

this 4ft R10 tube? of course  twas the very last one they had (that I could see, they did however have a whole bunch of 5ft T8 ones left)  I checked it over and theres no light leakage from the regular white tube contained within (which a Polish MCFE 40W T12 3500K White Halophosphate tube from February 2002

(its a much deeper red in real life, also extremely dim, but I suppose it would be being a darkroom filtered tube !)

don't leave it on in any of ya windows like!......

[Zelandeth]

Aye, I'd have grabbed one too just for the "that's a real oddball" value if I were in your shoes.  Odd construction for sure.

[High Jetter]

Yeabut what was it used for?

[AdgeCutler]

After seeking out a new camshaft and followers for VJN Mary I found the cost to be prohibitive, at over £700 I just can’t afford it. On the weekend I took the gamble and bought a couple of scrap engines and set about stripping them, first findings held very little promise. 

 

[AdgeCutler]

Getting into the heart of these engines was quite a challenge, every single fitting and fixture was corroded and tight, many of the hex heads were no longer hexagonal and most studs had become at one with the castings. Each piston was seized in the bore but due to the nature of the design have to be removed before the crankcase can be split. 
I did resort to cutting through several studs and using a lot of heat to make any progress but after 12 hours I had a pile of rotten components.

[LightBulbFun]

14 hours ago, auntiemaryscanary said:

I'll send you a pm about payment and postage unless you fancy a trip up the M1 or M11/A1 to Nottm

 I almost did when I saw Autosparks wanted £15 to ship a bunch of Lucas bullet connectors and ratchet toolset that was already pushing £100!

but it would of been a 6 hour round trip, maybe I should of would of been a good excuse to kill a couple birds with one stone and ensured safe passage of the tube...

 

BTW I did check and it is fully overlapping  

[SiC]

21 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

since I actually had 5 minutes with the car to myself this time I had a bit of investigate and figured out why the heater control was clacking/clicking and otherwise not seemingly doing much

seems how the cable attaches has failed in some fashion, not sure if some plastic bit has broken off or it just needs clipping back in place, but at least the heater control under the bonnet is quite accessible so can be operated via that if needed or someone can grab the end of the cable under the dash with some pliers or mole-grips or such!

The end of that cable should be shaped as a Z and go through the hole in the control. Annoyingly it looks like it's broken off.

You'll see where I replaced that cable with a new one (MGB cable and not expensive iirc) on my thread.

Short term probably put the end back in the lever and a zip tie to hold it in place. Or bend another Z in it and move the clamped bit along to make it work with the slightly shorter cable.

[Zelandeth]

15 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Yeabut what was it used for?

Honestly not sure!  High wattage mercury lamps really haven't had much of a mainstream use case over here in the last 40 years - especially without any form of colour correction.  Colour corrected lamps did have some following for a long while mainly because they were comparatively cheap and exceptionally reliable, but that came at the expense of efficiency and poor colour rendering.  Non colour corrected lamps as far as I'm aware never really saw much use here in mainstream applications once corrected versions became available.  The exceptions being a few printing/industrial/chemistry industry uses where the particular spectral output was useful.  Though even there it's been a while as metal halide lamps emerged in the 80s/90s for a lot of those applications where they did the same job more efficiently.

They did see a lot of use in Asian countries though where the very high colour temperature was seen as desirable - why Japan's Iwasaki have always been a big player in the game (and most of their output being almost artworks with their attention to detail).  Though I believe with the rise of LED tech even that market is largely gone now.

Likewise in the US where the primary attraction was the low cost of both the gear and lamps saw them be a popular choice for warehouse street lighting etc, especially in a market where energy costs until recently were relatively low, the low costs and long life saw them be popular until really quite recently.  Again though alternative technologies and environmental regs have seen them pretty much consigned to the history books there now.

This is all being written off the top of my head sitting in a carpark waiting for a shop to reopen after lunch - sure @LightBulbFun will be able to provide a lot more in depth background!

As for what this exact lamp would have been used for...I honestly don't know.  If it was a fluorescent version, I'd say likely just for replacement purposes for really old floodlighting gear (assuming a relatively wide beam angle anyway).  In non fluorescent form though, I've honestly no idea!  Though as was mentioned before it's possible that this only exists because of some order spec mixup so it may well never have actually had a use!

If they weren't so damned expensive I'd honestly grab one just for the sheer oddball value of it.

[LightBulbFun]

15 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Yeabut what was it used for?

as Zel covers well, here in the UK? nowhere, its quite likely a specification cockup, someone ordered the Asian spec lamp not realising its different from the British spec lamp electrically the same but fairly phyiscally different, so if you replaced a British lamp with one of these Venture lamps what you get light output wise might not be as expected!

in its native country/use-case it would be used for narrow beam spot lighting, the phosphor coated versions with their wide beam would of been used for floodlighting 

see how the lamp on the far left has a white inner coating and the one next to it (as well the stand alone on the far right) have a shiny silver uncoated inner surface (you often see these sold as "marine lamps" because lots of ship building goes on in Asia/Japan and the lighting is thus quite JDM spec)

heres another picture showing how all these Japanese lamps have the same Aluminised reflector, just some with an extra phosphor coating layer some without

 

 

in Europe/the UK Mercury reflector lamps had Titanium Dioxide reflectors with a phosphor coating layer on top always, these where primarily used as high-bay lighting, like what you see in warehouses etc, they had the advntage that like with sealed beams on a car, you got a whole new reflector assembly each lamp change, and the reflector (being inside a sealed glass lamp!) always stayed clean

in this picture the 2 overall white ones are British 1000W GEC reflector lamps, where as the 3 Silver ones are Iwasaki Japanese spec lamps

 

 

 

from my collection here are 2 American Sylvania 1000W Mercury lamps, one Phosphor coated one clear, in a Mercury lamp the phosphor is there to convert the non-visable UV light produced and convert it to red light, to Colour correct the otherwise blue-green mercury discharge, the phosphor coating also has the effect of diffusing the light, which in a Reflector lamp will affect the beam profile, hence why they produced reflector lamps both with and without phosphor coatings, and even these standard Mercury lamps in the US and Asia where produced side by side in both clear and phosphor types, both for cost reasons and optical performance reasons (here in the UK those applications demanding the better fine optical performance of the clear mercury lamps, where quickly fitted with more efficient Metal halide lighting, or where colour rendering did not matter high pressure sodium lighting, only very niche applications for printing/UV related reasons did clear Mercury lamps hang about, and even phosphor coated mercury lamps where in sharp decline in the UK after the 1970's ernergy crisis, SOX lighting saw to many of the mercury street lighting installations)

 

[Zelandeth]

Kind of ironically, the last place I saw any widespread use of mercury lamps in the UK was actually here in MK.  The covered walkways around the town centre building used reflector style mercury lamps for lighting.  They've been dead for probably the best part of 20 years now but quite a few of the lamps are still there.  I think they just abandoned the system in place and turned them off when lamps started to get expensive and the surrounding street lighting was upgraded.

The old food supermarket building also had most of the public walkways and the car park all lit with Mercury right up to it's closure somewhere around 2020.  Though given how badly greened out they were I don't think anyone had touched any of them since about 2010.

[Christine]

If only there where a thread on here  already  , dedicated  light bulbs..

Oh wait ...

[dollywobbler]

9 hours ago, AdgeCutler said:

Getting into the heart of these engines was quite a challenge, every single fitting and fixture was corroded and tight, many of the hex heads were no longer hexagonal and most studs had become at one with the castings. Each piston was seized in the bore but due to the nature of the design have to be removed before the crankcase can be split. 
I did resort to cutting through several studs and using a lot of heat to make any progress but after 12 hours I had a pile of rotten components.

Very sorry. Have messaged as I may have options. I didn't think sooner!

[AdgeCutler]

I was supposed to follow up this mornings posts but then life, work got in the way.

The big gamble with the two very sad engines did indeed pay off and in the best possible way.  The first engine to be broken gave up a much better camshaft but sadly water ingress had allowed corrosion. Almost unbelievably the second and worst (shagged beyond hope!) looking engine externally,  yielded a completely unworn camshaft and followers.  I count myself incredibly lucky to have found a golden pin in a huge shitty muck heap.

Here are closer photos of my original cams, followers and the ones that despite the odds came from an absolute heap of disaster.

[Andrew353w]

To an uneducated eye that camshaft & rockers look almost new! Well done! 

[LightBulbFun]

On 22/03/2026 at 15:53, LightBulbFun said:

had a spur of the moment outing in REV, there was a pair of nice round circular light fixtures complete with unknown detail but vintage looking tubes, on FB market place that had been up for yonks as "not actually free but make me an offer" bothered by the fact I had not had REV out for a run in a fair while, I finally decided to see what the crack was fearing the worse "oh I want £200 for the pair" or such nonsense, but twas actually a pretty reasonable £30 for the pair in the end  

looks like I was not the only one out and about in their Invacar that day, good see to JBY503J (ex LVX250J) is still accruing the miles  

[LightBulbFun]

On 25/03/2026 at 09:30, LightBulbFun said:

On 24/03/2026 at 19:22, auntiemaryscanary said:

I'll send you a pm about payment and postage unless you fancy a trip up the M1 or M11/A1 to Nottm

 I almost did when I saw Autosparks wanted £15 to ship a bunch of Lucas bullet connectors and ratchet toolset that was already pushing £100!

but it would of been a 6 hour round trip, maybe I should of would of been a good excuse to kill a couple birds with one stone and ensured safe passage of the tube...

Autosparks, if your going to charge £15(!) postage for something, the least you could do is not just chuck it in a jiffy bag and punt it through the regular post, which of course burst and one of the tools are AWOL, thankfully not the main crimping tool, just the little closing tool, but its still quite irksome, suppose its time to fire off an email!

https://www.autosparks.co.uk/medium-bullet-crimp-set-with-tools

 

[MrBig]

That's a pretty poor show!

[MT606]

at least czech royal fail apologised for their outstanding handling service......

[Mrs6C]

On 25/03/2026 at 07:08, AdgeCutler said:

after 12 hours I had a pile of rotten components.

Crikey! Well done for wading through that lot. Were there any of the 'pear-shaped' oil breather lids in the pile and if so, are they any good? IIRC REV may need one and it would be good to know there are some spare units around.

[AdgeCutler]

6 hours ago, Mrs6C said:

Crikey! Well done for wading through that lot. Were there any of the 'pear-shaped' oil breather lids in the pile and if so, are they any good? IIRC REV may need one and it would be good to know there are some spare units around.

I have been on the lookout, sadly the ones that I have come across so far have gone porous.

[LightBulbFun]

had a day of working on the Cars with my Brother, first up was his Corsa C, he just wanted me to give it a quick look over, its one persistent issue since purchase s that it likes to drink coolant, no mayo on the cap and it behaves all fine as long as you top it up, but there is the question of where is it going, sometimes it seems inconsonant as to how much it drinks (ie you could do a big drive and it would not change at all, but do a bit of around town driving and suddenly all the coolant from the expansion bottle vanishes), so I decided to have another look for where it might be vanishing off too

and noticed during todays checkover this puddle of coolant, and then noticed when looking what might place coolant there, that one of the hoses coming from the expansion bottle going over that area had this suspicious patch on it

wonder if theres a pin hole leak thats spraying coolant out under pressure? something to have a look at next time the car is hot/fully pressurised

also I had a look at the tyres, I noticed this on the front tyres we had fitted when he first got the vehicle, would that be some inner edge tyre wear I am looking at there on the right side? I noticed it seemed to be worn on both of the front tyres in the same manner not just this one singular tye, would it be a tracking issue or something else?

 

then we started an oil change on REV which was going well until the oil filter decided it liked where it was very much and refused to budge, so with REV now imobilsed we hopped in the VDP and popped to Halfords to get some gubbins including a couple different oil filter removal tools

also ended up stuck in traffic right next to a petrol station so while I was there to so to speak, filled up, 19.96L over, 95 miles, 22Mpg this time, @danthecapriman I genuinely wonder if your Yank tank would be any worse around here!, certainly makes me miss REV's frugal 50 the gallon!

after much gnashing of teeth and getting medieval on its arse with a pair of oil filter removal  pliers, it finally yielded, so was able to finish the job, new filter in place and oil filled up, turned the engine over on the Dynastart and the oil pressure light went out and so called it good there, (will obviously double check the level and for leaks when I do actually next go to take REV out for a spin)

I also tended to REV's sole singular grease nipple, (just right of the shock absorber bolt head) I have no idea what its for exactly, or how much grease its actually meant to be serviced with but I gave it a few pumps on the grease gun for good measure

I did noticed while I was there this strip of something appeared to be flapping about, again not sure what its for, but I do wonder if it has anything to do with the odd Squeaking noise I have noticed from the front suspension when going over certain bumps in the road

and finally my brother gave REV a sponge-and-soapy-bucket wash, looking much better now  

I did intend to also service the VDP, but turns out I dont have a socket or spanner big enough for the sump plug,  (certainly not a spanner big enough, I might have had a socket but it was hard to tell if it was too small and did not fit the bolt head, or was the right size but fowling on the casting BL helpfully put right above the bolt head!)

anyone know what size socket/spanner I might need for this Job?

a long day, and did not quite managed to get everything done as i had hopped, but I am pleased to have finally given REV a bit of a service and and got her a wash at long last! 

 

 

 

[Andyrew]

Blimey, must have had my weetabix when I put that filter on!  was the filter from from the stash ? Or had you bought a new one when I done it. Just  Wonder if the rubbers gone hard on them if it was from the stash. 

[danthecapriman]

25 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

also ended up stuck in traffic right next to a petrol station so while I was there to so to speak, filled up, 19.96L over, 95 miles, 22Mpg this time, @danthecapriman I genuinely wonder if your Yank tank would be any worse around here!, certainly makes me miss REV's frugal 50 the gallon!

Petrol is there for burning my friend! It’s your moral duty and obligation to burn as much of it as possible thus ultimately improving the climate🤣

Im not sure how it’d fare tbh around your way. Urban driving is definitely not what it’s really designed for though so it certainly wouldn’t be very good! It’d be a pain for parking too with the size of it. 
Now probably isn’t the best time to try either with petrol prices going up.

[LightBulbFun]

56 minutes ago, Andyrew said:

Blimey, must have had my weetabix when I put that filter on!  was the filter from from the stash ? Or had you bought a new one when I done it. Just  Wonder if the rubbers gone hard on them if it was from the stash. 

haha yes I was wondering if you had taken out some frustrations on it, or if I had unknowingly done something to annoy you so you smeared some Sikaflex on the sealing surface for good measure

(incidentally I did try one of those oil filter socket things, but it barely gripped the top of the oil filter at all slipped, good thing I also bought the big pliers for good measure too)

 

I think the filter that I have just removed was indeed one from the stash, with the one I put on there being the one I bought off amazon myself back in about 2021 or so

[captain_70s]

I always fit my oil filters to a firm hand tight, they always seem to self tighten on the car. There was something fairly recently where I had to stab a big screwdriver through the casing to undo it.

Presumably something to do with heat cycles...

I use a big adjustable spanner for sump plugs, because I'm a barbarian.

[AdgeCutler]

Brian the 12e had his first proper outing of the year yesterday, a nice little car meet in the Churchyard, Alveston. He received lots of interest in the Sunshine while I enjoyed a Bacon roll and a mooch. Driving home suddenly got interesting when the wind started to blow a hooley, requiring lots of twitchy steering corrections and a freak storm cloud burst its load of hail and sleet. It only lasted a couple of minutes but as the windscreen hit freezing point it was misting up (no demister on a mk12!) rapidly and the wiper piling up sleet either side of its stroke (porthole of peril @dollywobbler!?) left me with very limited visibility on a fast and winding road used by HGVs. I suppose all the excitement just added to the adventure and I enjoyed the outing, the little Invacar performed to its full capabilities.