Help with Hourmeter

[powershop]

They say the only dumb question is the one you don't ask, so could someone 'PLEASE' teach me how to read this hourmeter.

 

[JATO_RaT]

Confusing isn't it. My guess is 63 hours. I can't quite make out if there is a yellow pointer there. I read it as the white needle indicates every 60 hours with the red needle indicating every hour. Once the red gets to 60, the white needle will also reflect it by being at the next 60 hour index or in this case, 120 hours. Now if there is a yellow needle in there then all bets are off. Rat...

 

[Anonymous Poster]

RaT beat me to it...

Assuming that the yellow "smudge' at 120 is not a third needle, I would read this as just over 63 hours.

The longer red needle reads againce the outer scale, and the shorter white needle against the inner scale. This is that same general mapping and the "big" and "little" hands on a clock.

The red needle rotates once every 60 hours, and the white once every 600 hours.

At 90 hours, the red needle will be pointing straight down at 30 (the "six o'clock position") and the white needle will be midway between 60 and 120.

(Some old transmission equipment had similar meters, but typically with hundreds of hours on the outer ring and thousands on the inner.)

 

[powershop]

There is a third yellow needle at 120 !!

 

[Anonymous Poster]

OK, so let's consider this again...

The inner scale (60,120,180,240...) appears to be printed in yellow. So it would make sense that the yellow needle is read against this scale.

The outer scale includes both red and white markings. So both the red and white needles probably refer to that scale. Based on the common clock model, I would expect that the red (longer) needle would turn faster than the white (shorter) needle.

What I can't figure out is the significance of the ranges that are colored in red.

Have you ever seen this meter in operation? Does either the red or white needle move at a visible rate?

I love a mystery! /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Rick Jay]

TractorlessSacto,

What you said makes sense. Assuming the red and white needles both used the outer scale (white and red numbers) than perhaps every revolution of the white needle is 60 hours and every revolution of the red needle is 60 minutes. (Seems odd to have minutes on an hour meter, but maybe that's useful for timing other events.)

And every revolution of the white needle will advance the yellow needle to the next indicator, which is a 60 hours point.

Hey, I just noticed...if you divide the yellow scale by 10, then that is equivalent to the numbers on the red/white scale.

O.K....so here's my guess...currently shown on meter is 120 hours (yellow) + 6 hours (white) + 3 minutes (red) or about 126 hours. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

O.K....somebody else guess.

~Rick

 

[frank_f15]

that is really a confusing hourmeter. mine just says hours and a simple readout, i have seen less confusing gauges on the f15 /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[gator]

My guess is red= hours past yellow and white =minutes (shorter= less precise). I'll bet the red lines on the outer range are reminders for check, clean, grease, tighten or change. Those solid reds kinda fall inline with the directions in my JD 750 shop manual for the check, clean etc... hours of use times.
So my guess is 123 hours 5 minutes.

 

[powershop]

Now I will tell you more. This is on a 1985 Jacobsen with smoked wiring. So I would add 600 hours, so more like 723 hours? I will try to hot wire it and see how it works.

 

[powershop]

I think Rick got it. Red needle is one hour around. White is 60 hours around. Yellow is 600 around. So 726 hours!!