I read a lot of the threads on the Z clock repair and so I pulled out the clock and went to work. My clock was unfortunately toast, so I went back to looking at clock threads and decided to just replace the guts with a battery operated clock. I bought a Sharp clock from Wally World for $3.99 and a battery adapter from Radio Shack for $1.10. The swap was fairly easy even for someone as unskilled as me. I kept the hands from the Sharp including the second hand (I just liked the look of the second hand sweep). The Sharp clock had a short enough stem that it didn't need any trimming, I attached the clock to the Z clock backing plate with double sided tape and a couple of drops of super glue, the rubber band I have left in place as a backup to hold the guts of the clock in place. Here are some pics of the process with one (pic #6) of the empty Sharp clock. I believe the pics are self explanatory.

The final product(pic #4) doesn't look to bad and I was able to trim the second hand to accept the Z clock time adjuster(?). I will attach the battery holder to the inside of the glove box to make it easy to change the battery. I'm also putting LED bulbs in all the gauges and painted the inside of the cans.

Nice job! How difficult was it to trim the 2nd hand to accept the stock time adjuster?

Dennis

Real simple, its made of plastic and I just cut the sides off to fit the time adjuster, it makes it a little harder to adjust time, because it only turns the second hand, so you have turn it a lot.

Thanks for this! I'm pulling my instruments all off next week to install a new radio and LEDs, and wanted to get to this while I'm at it. No idea if my stock "could" clock work. But I was thinking about going this route

One of the things I forgot to mention is the Sharp clock has a bunch of wires for the alarm, snooze and switches, the only ones you need are the black and red that go to battery holder in the clock, I just cut the rest off.

One of the things I forgot to mention is the Sharp clock has a bunch of wires for the alarm, snooze and switches, the only ones you need are the black and red that go to battery holder in the clock, I just cut the rest off.

Cool, thanks!

Now you have me looking for 12VDC clockworks that I could put into my old clock.

Now you have me looking for 12VDC clockworks that I could put into my old clock.

*Cough* *Cough* Why limit yourself? *Cough* LM317 *Cough* *Cough*

*Cough* *Cough* Why limit yourself? *Cough* LM317 *Cough* *Cough*

I really have to meet you sometime.

Haha! Bring it on! That would be excellent.

My 42 year old clock has been ticking away, about 10 minutes/day fast for the last two weeks. When I got my car last August, one of the first things I did was to wash down the insides with contact cleaner from Radio Shack. I noticed that the pressure from the spray had dislodged a pin from the spring that is wound by the electric motor. I carefully repositioned it and it seemed to work on the bench. However, once I put it back together and re-installed it, it would stop after five-ten minutes.

Not expecting much for my efforts, I turned my attention to other, more pressing issues. Two weeks ago, I was installing a locally fabricated glove box and decided to take another look at the clock before I buttoned things up.

Took the clock out, removed the back cover, and powered up the clock to see if I could figure out what was binding. Lo and behold, the clock ran merrily through the night. The next day, examining the clock prior to re-assembly, I determine that I had not dressed the power leads correctly when I had re-assembled the clock the last time.

Putting the clock back, it has been ticking away as if it was brand new. The only problem is that it is running fast about 10 minutes/day, probably because I washed out all the lubricating oil. Ask me if I'm tickled pink.

My initial plan was to replace the electrical components on the PCB board, but once out with board off, the counter balance attached to the spring was completely broken and mo amount of tinkering could fix it, thus the battery operated quartz clock.