Why nothing got done on the MG today.

I had a cerulean blue firemist 78 deville and loved driving my couch and the fender mount indicators are so fun.  

The sun is peeking out! The car's still dirty, but you can see the paint waking up.

And a coworker had a bit of fun.

Stop pushing this thread to the top, I'm trying to forget about that '60.

Keith Tanner said:

The sun is peeking out! The car's still dirty, but you can see the paint waking up.

And a coworker had a bit of fun.

Reminds me of the defined perspective sketches from a "How to draw cars" book that I had as a kid.

I swear the updates will stop or slow down soon, but I'm having fun.

Before I left work, I put the big guy on the lift so I could check the wheel balance.

The wheels weren't perfectly balanced, but it became pretty clear that the tires were also not round. Remember, they sat for a few years before I put them on the new car. I'm working on the theory that they just haven't got warm enough yet to relax and round out - it's been near freezing. It's easy enough to just drive on them a bit longer and see.

Nothing alarming was visible underneath. I'll take a closer look when I do the shock change.

When I got home, I decided to take something apart. The clock is an interesting critter and requires regular servicing and maintenance. It has had neither and doesn't work. And as I learned more about it, the more interesting it got. I grabbed the one out of the green car as well.

It's a mechanical clock that self-winds fairly often using a kick from a solenoid. They die partially from neglect - if the battery voltage gets low, the points that trigger the winding may not have enough current to separate and so they burn up wires. It was pretty clear that something like that had happened here.

Took it apart and found the burnt wire. Soldered that back together and then fiddled and fiddled to learn how to reassemble it correctly. I think I have it, but it barely runs strongly enough to get to the point where it trips the points. It did unwind the clock spring when I was disassembling it and I got it right at least once, but I have my doubts about the current assembly job. My desktop power supply doesn't seem to supply enough kick to work quite right, so I'll hook it up to a car battery shortly. I do have it so the power supply shows a load.

I did lubricate all the various bearing surfaces with proper watch oil as well. You can see the unwound spring here.

The first clock was clearly stamped April 29, 1966. The one out of the green car - also a 1966 model - was different. Same concept, but a different mechanism. It appears to have stopped working because the spring just didn't have enough spring left to power the clock. I've lubricated it once, I'll try it again later and see if I can get it working. Until I can get enough spring tension to power the clockwork, there's no point in paying much attention to the electricals.

I have become inordinately interested in these clocks. Turns out the first one is a Westclox ( as stamped on the back), the second is a Borg. You can get a quartz conversion kit for the Borg that claims to drop consumption from 3A (!!!) to 11-13 mA but will also get rid of the tick-tock-tick-tock-CLICK-tick-tock sound.

I think I'm going to be spending some time playing with these. It is my goal to get one working simply because I want to master it.

Biggest dork here does Miata for a living, drives a 56' caddy, and fixes clocks for fun. Rad.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

That 3 amps is for a very short time interval. Good thing too!

I love these clocks so much I think I'm going to build a housing for one so I can keep it on my desk.

So, the Westclox first. It's out of the "new" car and is in better aesthetic condition so that's the one I want working. I spent quite a bit of time examining and prodding and figuring out how it worked, which is 1000% more satisfying than looking for YouTube videos or forum posts. Finally got it up and running properly - cleaned up points, extra lubrication, general cleaning of electrics, some tweaking of springs and adjustments. My biggest problem was that the solenoids (yes, two) weren't giving enough of a kick to break the connection again until they were clean. Using a car battery instead of my power supply helped as well. A little cap on the back of the housing might be a good idea - that would ensure enough of a kick even if the car battery is getting weak, which is what killed this one. The points stayed in contact and a wire burned out.

The Borg took a little more attention. That spring that I thought was weak wasn't stretched out at all when I disassembled.

Gratuitous picture of clock carnage.

Much cleaning and lubrication gave it the drive to run the mechanism, but the points weren't firing consistently. I'd cleaned them, but they were eroded. 

I built them up with solder and sanded them flat so there's a big burly contact surface. We'll see if the solder survives the momentary heat of contact or if I have to use something else. Looks like they're riveted on which is a potential problem.

With that done, both clocks are running pretty well. The Westclox fires the solenoid far more often than the Borg does. I'd estimate about every 30-40s versus every 2 minutes. If only I had some way to time it :) Right now, they're both hooked up to a battery to see how they deal with extended run times.

Being mechanical clocks, they can be calibrated to keep good time. And they have a very cool little mechanism - if you adjust the clock, it tweaks the speed sightly. If you move the time forward, the clock will start to run faster. It's basically a feedback loop bringing the clock into perfect calibration based on your input. That's really clever.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick CLICK tick tick tick tick tick

If there are any mods reading, this should probably be retitled something like "Keith's 1966 Cadillac" and moved to the build diary section.

I love that color combo.

Clock geekdom engage!

IIRC most automotive clocks from that era would adjust their speed based on your adjusting the time.  I will assume this is because the Big 3 were just outsourcing the clocks and they all did it that way.  (AMC is assumed to be outsourcing everything)

This thread has me nostalgic for the tick-tick-ticking of the clock in my Thunderbird, that I bought when I was 17 and had hearing that wasn't so upgeberkd that I couldn't hear the clock ticking.  It'd be neat to retrofit one to my RX-7 (the cruiser one, not the rallycross one) but your desk clock idea is much cooler and practical.

Just what everyone is waiting for, a clock update!

They didn't make it.

I started both of these right about 7:00. The Westclox made it almost four hours, the Borg about an hour and a half. The Westclox is running out of power before triggering the solenoid. The Borg didn't trigger the solenoid, I think. 

I restarted the Westclox and it's been going about 6 hours so far. I think I need to tear it down further and do a little more cleaning. For the Borg, I'll take the back off and figure out why it stopped as well.

In non-clock news, a little present arrived today from eBay. It's a proper color chart for 1966 Cadillacs. And now we know that my car is not Cobalt Firemist, it's Caribbean Aqua. It's hard to get a good picture of this, but in person it's fairly clear.

The car has moved into its forever parking space now. It's not as hard to get in there as you might think because it's a straight shot. This is workable and it keeps the big Caddy out of the way of cars going on/off the lift.

To celebrate, I started doing some maintenance. A new fuel filter, some new valve cover gaskets, a bunch of carb cleaner down the carb, etc. I'm going to do a bit of a cosmetic refresh on the valve covers because they look a little crusty. I used a metallic blue on my last one that was a pretty good match (Cobalt Blue Metallic, ironically) but I might look for a non-metallic version.

I think I might spring for some new belts while I'm at it.

I spy the world's most well engineered cardboard box!

You can buy the correct engine paint in spray cans for about $20 a can, if you're really insistent on the correct shade.

This thread is so much better on desktop vs mobile for the pictures.

Also, now searching ebay for clocks. Not as expensive as I anticipated!

So I took the Westclox apart because it would only run for 6 hours or so - and now that I've reassembled it, it won't run long at all. There's some friction in the mechanism somewhere. I've torn it down a few times. I'll figure it out.

I might order a new clockspring for it just in case. Oooo, there's something to learn there.

As for the valve covers - I don't need a perfect OE match. This is not a concours car, I just don't want rusty valve covers because they look nasty. I'll get a dark blue that's close enough.

I had the Westclox on my desk today, tick tock clicking away all day. I've decided that I need to do a deeper cleaning, it's a matter of power vs friction. If I add more power to the spring, the solenoid won't be able to kick it as far. So there's just too much resistance in the gear train. 

That's the theory.

I spent a bit of time puttering today.

Valve covers are nasty. The rusty one is off the car, the nicer one is from my collection. They're also covered in that film of old car oil that just plain takes the color out of everything. I then cleaned them and stuck them in the bead blaster and used a sanding block to clean off the sealing surfaces and then my phone decided not to save the picture.

(picture of pretty bare metal valve covers goes here)

Turns out Ford dark blue is a pretty darn good match to the old Cadillac color, just a little more saturated. And it's available off the shelf instead of having to order it. Good enough. These are still wet and of course they're clean.

Good Lord that Caddy is a beauty! Nothing better than a big ol' American land barge to cruise around in. Keep up the good work!

Painting valve covers is a gateway drug

On the green car, I once had a kitchen full of interior chrome that I was polishing piece by piece. We are looking to avoid that situation.

When I was newlywed, I built a 215 Buick shortblock in my 2nd floor walkup kitchen.

I couldn't pull that off now....If I had to!

Great thread. Keep it up.

Rog

I'm going deeper into the clocks, so I'll start another build thread for that.

Instead, let's look at those valve covers! I'll call that color match sufficient. Not perfect, but easy to duplicate and close enough.

Yes, the air cleaner is at risk of getting a coat of black paint. But then I'd lose the sticker!

Reassembled, I took the boat out for a cruise to meet Janel for lunch. Now if only I could remember where I parked...

Stopped off for a bit of a bath on the way home. Since the car still needs new window seals, this calls for a u-spray-it. Which means a color-matched foam party!

The big guy definitely needs some wax. That is on The List.

But there's a new item at the top of The List. On the way home, the brake pedal got reaaaallly long.  Looks like I've lost a rear wheel cylinder, and I have my suspicions about the fronts as well.

Luckily, this is the sort of thing that's on the shelf at NAPA for about $3/corner. I'll pick up some new shoes and probably have some fresh hardware on hand just in case. Let's hear it for that massive 1960's GM parts bin. The shocks are here as well, so the plan is pretty clear.

I think your Caddy is bigger square footage wise than some tiny houses..

In reply to dxman92 :

Probably more comfortable to live in, too.