Whelen Siren Problems

IA · Post by IA » Sat Oct 02, 2004 4:37 pm

Qiuck question... I have a Whelen siren that when is on (Wail, Yelp, Pier) it starts to turn on and off cyclicly. The backlight display dims on and off with the siren tones. I SI tested the speakers (2) and they are OK, I also checked the power connections and they test OK. What could the problem be? Possibly a bad PA, the siren is about 8 years old and has gotten moderate use? Will whelen fix them for a flat rate?

Thanks for the help.

dbcomm · Post by **dbcomm** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 5:05 pm

WHat model siren is it? First thing I would check is the ground connection. Battery or chassis? Could be that the power amp in the siren is going out.

IA · Post by IA » Sat Oct 02, 2004 6:38 pm

It is a WHS295HFS1. It is about 8 years old. The ground and power look good.

sscott9341 · Post by **sscott9341** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:01 pm

I think the last post ask where do you have the ground connection at. See if you get a small arc at the ground connection when you turn the siren on.

Post by Pj » Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:20 pm

I'd say a loose wire or bad connection somewhere. Check as much of the +/- wire as possible, as the wire may have broke within the insulation.

Hell, with the vehicle going no where, turn the siren on and bang on the amp

I'd say a loose connection somewhere on the ground side as well.

IA · Post by IA » Mon Oct 04, 2004 4:07 pm

It turned out to be a bad speaker driver. Even though the SI diagnostic did not indicate a problem one of two drivers was bad.

thebigphish · Post by **thebigphish** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:55 am

well, Whelen speaker drivers are designed with a avg lifespan of around 50 hours of duty time, so it's actually rather good that you got 8 years out of one.

talk about planned obscelescence.

IA · Post by IA » Tue Oct 05, 2004 9:04 am

It was a CPI driver but never the less I'm happy that it lasted for eight years. $114 for a new driver from CPI.

AVFD2922 · Post by **AVFD2922** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:51 pm

Hmm, sounds like your siren didn't do it's job. I have same siren running 2 speakers and had speaker go bad on me. Siren wouldn't sound at all, got failure light from siren diagnostics. Another problem in your future maybe.