Acorn 120 serial number confused

[gerry-smillie]

October 22, 2014 at 8:30 am

Worked on Acorn Stairlifts till around 2005 and have started up again on my own selling reconditioned models.

Problem i have at the moment when buying and selling is I have no idea how to tell the age of a stairlift other than what seller is telling me.

Old style serial number gave year of manufacture on the first 4 digits eg 2005 but after 2007 they started using a different system eg. 110102234567.

Can anyone help me understand how this system works and how to tell which year a specific serial number comes from. I have a list of serial numbers and have an idea because of a recall between 2007 and 2011 but I cant for the life of me work out any sequence to these numbers. HELP

[kevin]

October 22, 2014 at 9:53 pm

First 6 digits show whether its Acorn or Brooks and handing etc,
110201 Brooks left hand
110202 Brooks right hand
110101 Acorn Left Hand
110102 Acorn Right Hand

second 6 are sequential serial numbers from what I can tell
for Brooks roughly as follows

230000 – Mar 2008
270000 – Mar 2009
300000 – Mar 2010
340000 – Mar 2011
390000 – Mar 2012
440000 – Mar 2013
496000 – Feb 2014

So 110102234567 would definitely be a Right hand Acorn possibly manufactured around April 2008 (provided the Acorn sequential numbers are shared with the Brooks lifts)

[gerry-smillie]

October 23, 2014 at 7:37 am

Thanks Kevin

[gerry-smillie]

October 23, 2014 at 9:54 am

Have another conundrum for you this information you gave me looks good and ties in with all lifts i know the history of so stands to reason they are correct.

Only thing is i have a couple of stairlifts in this format 110202 so brooks right hand, serial number 36147U
110101 so acorn left hand, serial number 36309U

Any ideas on this

[kevin]

October 23, 2014 at 12:17 pm

Sure you haven’t just missed a digit?
Plenty of mine have a U suffix but all follow 12 numerals, do the cases have barcodes by any chance? iirc you could scan them with a phone app and it would read the serial number off as text.

[nsl]

October 23, 2014 at 5:43 pm

I just ring brook tech when I have your issue and ask them to track the serial number. There usually pretty helpful.

[gerry-smillie]

October 27, 2014 at 6:11 pm

That is a great idea never thought of that did use this service a lot back in the early 2000s, could you give me their number for future reference

thanks

[kevin]

March 6, 2015 at 11:46 pm

Rehanding is quite expensive as you’ll need to replace the seat and carriage casing, pretty much makes it financially unviable

[nsl]

March 8, 2015 at 1:02 pm

Easyer and cheaper to buy a s/h lift of the correct hand.

[kevin]

March 8, 2015 at 5:29 pm

The seat pivot is offset to whichever hand it is built for, the base cannot be flipped.
The seat post can be flipped round but the case has a cutout for the seat post to pass through, again offset.