Dino Saga 070610 _ Veglia Borletti Clock

Dino Saga 070610 _ Veglia Borletti Clock

18 years ago the clock went intermittent. Just quit for a few hours and OK again. After a while the Reset knob decided to quit too. Let it go since radio showed time. Have never gotten around to finding the problems. Decided that this week was the week.

Pulled instrument panel. Long nosed pliers got the Ground and the +12v Red wire off. Be careful. If red wire hits ground, sparks fly. I slipped a piece of plastic tubing over push-on. Could have pulled fuse but was lazy. Used a screwdriver to push out light with wire still attached. Then I got my fingers on the two thumbscrews and the clock was out. Put panel back. No telling how long the fix would take. Took clock into my shop.

The chromed brass band that holds things together had been off before. The link at the bottom was gone so spreading the band let everything loose. Plastic window had yellowed. Not dirt. Plastic had turned light milky brown so planned to replace that. Took two small brass nuts off the back of the case and the mechanism slid right out. So did a nice plastic compound gear just rattling around inside. That explained the lack of reset but couldn’t figure where the shaft for that gear had gone, or had been in the first place.

First things first. What was intermittent? Hooked up 12v supply and clock ran upside down but not right side up. Put a meter on the resistor feeding all circuitry and wiggled the 12v push-on terminal. Power went on and off. Pushing and pulling on the terminal had cracked the PC board conductor. Easy to fix. Soldered push-on to conductor and to rivet holding things together. One down.

Loose gear had to go between setting knob and hands gearing. Could not see any place for a shaft. Took off hands and removed clock face. Hands gearing was brass, all else plastic. Saw a white spot in the plastic main casting. Remains of a plastic shaft about 1.5 mm in diameter. Hole in plastic gear was 1.5 mm. Drilled out remains of plastic shaft. Stopped when I hit copper damper. Cut end off back of drill to make a shaft. About 6-7mm. Drilled hole one size larger and used CA to glue drill shaft into body.

Put all back together and still wouldn’t set. Hands stuck. Put drop of watch oil on all bearings and gears. Brass gears had stuck. Now everything worked. Put mechanism back into case with new polycarbonate window. Ground off chrome on ends of brass clamp ring and tinned with solder. Tacked a piece of wire across ends and all done.

Got fancy. Applied power and shook clock in all planes. OK. Then tried rotation in all planes. Bad idea. Stopped dead. Apart again. Timing wheels were stuck. Couldn’t see where. In the process of finding problem I broke off one of the pins driving the second hand. Timing wheels were free but clock would go 10 seconds and stop. Damn!

Put clock back together. Put back in car. I can set any time I want now. And see what I am doing. But the clock is as dead as ever. Oh well! Try again another day.

John
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I've used a Quartz movement and casing from a Fiat 124, spyder, etc. ($15 on eBay) and substituted the Dino clock's face, hands, bezel, and trim ring.
How did you get the exterior chrome trim ring back on without damaging the chrome exposed to the driver?

The lens are nearly always yellowed, I replaced it with a custom cut/ground edges/drilled using a jewel CD case for teh raw materials.

 

now this is interesting. i typically look at all the corbani threads so, if i wasn't too damn lazy, i knew how to fix common ailments for dino's.

i think this is one of the first threads you have called it quits for the day. i'm not one to criticise, as i can't repair crap and don't have the tools to even try. my laziness/ignorance is a given, but for you to throw the towel in for the day tells me "don't even think about screwing with my non-time keeping clocks

 

out of curiousity, why is the clock face on most ferrari's of this era always fogged/yellowed/whatever? my 308 was like that. most of my dino's are, and most clock glasses i see are. did ferrari have veglia meet some spec to match the other gauages? if so, all the other gauges are veglia as well, but aren't obscured. it has never made sense to me why the clock would detoriate, but the others lenses wouldn't. heat, maybe?

 

Probably due to the sun/UV damage for the clock lens but you'll probably ask and the other instruments do not experience the same yellowing.
I've got a pair of Carello headlight covers that experienced the same yellow fade.

 

As I believe others and possibly me have observed before when the clock issue comes up, for about $350., Palo Alto Speedometer will relpace the guts with a quartz movement (essentially bombproof) but using the original face, hands, etc, so no harm, no foul w/ final appearance. As for the yellowed face, I can't comment, since my original was ok.

 

Because all the other lenses are made from glass..

The clock stem requires a hole so it is plastic, and so it ages.......making one from a CD cover is therefore a very clever solution!

 

You have to drill glass before tempering and it's all a pain in the azz....high breakage rate, etc......

 

...and I learned it on FerrariChat!
Saw it on another thread from one of the other series of cars...

The only thing that I've difficulty with is removing/re-crimping the chrome trim ring surrounding the bezel.
Corbani, how did you do that?

 

Quite a coincidence, this thread. I had assumed that the clock on my car did not work, so was quite surprised the other week when I heard a ticking sound from the interior. It was the clock, and the second hand was moving (I hope they're supposed to tick). It seens a very light sideways nudge to the knob either turns off or starts the movement, so the problem must be mechanical. The quartz replacement sounds good, but since I use a cut-off switch to disconnect the battery each time I park the car, the clock has never been a priority fir me,

The clock on the tachometer of an MG TC (made up to 1949) is also notorious for not working (i sent mine to a specialist in England, and it worked for a while). Anyway, we can take comfort, as MG TC owners do, in the fact that the cl;ock is dead accurate twice a day!

 

Claus Meese as a great guy at Palo Alto Speedometer when it came to repairing my Bora's clock, but why pay him $350 to remove two nuts off the back, three hands on the face, and two screws to remove the faceplate (and reverse for install) when you can do this yourself with a $15 Fiat 124 core off of eBay?




BTW,
I iknow you're trying to make a helpful suggestion but there is one Maserati owner on the yahoo forum who had a disastrous result with Claus. See post #2019 below

"I would exercize extreme care in dealing with Palo Alto Speedometer.
Especially, do not send them anything you can't replace! I have gone through
hell trying to get the tach cable made for my 3500GT partly because of P. A.
Speedo.

I sent them tach and speedo cables which I had borrowed with the instructions to duplicate the cables. The tach cable also had a bent camshaft coupling attached. They destroyed the coupling in an apparent attempt to straighten it, in spite of instructions to leave it alone. They then proceeded to
cannibalize two perfectly good original cables and cobble up new cables using
parts taken from the old ones. I received two cables, not the original two
plus two copies, one destroyed camshaft coupling and a whole lot of attitude.


Tom
tig@... "

 

Someone stole my clock... I guess I'm OK then.......

Mr. G. (Napolis) used someone in Albuquerque ( or NM somwhere?) to redo the gauge faces in #002C that were radium coated, and still very "hot".....maybe aske him via PM who that was........

 

Like John, I have experienced intermittent clock difficulty. This has resulted in my rebuilding 3 different Dino clocks over the years. In all cases the culprit was either a broken solder joint or, more likely, the main shaft has jumped out of its "dimple"bearing. There is a screw at the end of the shaft that allows proper pressure adjustment. Too tight and the clock runs slow...too loose and it may jump out and stop running. Rather easy to take apart and examine. The hard part is the chrome ring. I use black electrical tape wrapped around the circumference of the ring nice and tight. When back in the dash no one will notice.

Jim S.

 

call Mike at D&M. He got the mechanical action on my Veglia clock (and several of the guys at tomyang.net) working for about $100
D&M Restoration
46 Grand Ave
Greenville, SC 29607
800-722-0854

bigtex, you're thinking of Margaret at Momo Enterprises in Albuquerque. She is the grande dame of gauges; does a lot of Pebble work and reconditioned the guages in our 500 Mondial.

 

Thanks for that!

Good to know there are other vendors out there...

There's a VDO guy here that was willing to try on mine but he had no support from Veglia, obviously.....

 

Had my clocks done at D&M and was very happy with their work and price. They can convert to quartz movement if you can live without the tic-tic movement of the original. I hesitated changing over my 64 Buick Electra clock for originality sake but am glad I did and it keeps excellent time.

 

I was going to convert to quartz, but I decided not to for two reasons. Mike at D&M told me that quartz movement was going to cause the resulting clock body to be another 3/4" or so deeper; I was already tight on space behind the dash of the 365GT2+2 because of the AC. Also, I thought that a mechanical rebuild was going to be a lot more expensive than it was; when Mike told me the price, I went with it.

 

Lots of good feedback on the clock fiasco. At first I thought the window discoloration was on one surface but polishing both sides did nothing. I then sanded a wedge on one surface down to the other surface. Polished the sanded area and found that the color is clean through. The last mm on the outside is clear. That leaves UV discoloring as the only plausable cause. I had a sheet of 1/16" Lexan (polycarbonate) so made a new window. Styrene is more brittle and difficult to work. I cut the circle with a pair of scissors. Last cut was 1/16"wide and edge is nice.

The chrome ring was originally joined by a strip (tape?) about 1/16" wide and 1/4" long. There was discoloration that size on outside of ring. The joint is directly under the setting knob and can't be seen from above. My joiner was missing, the ring was just pressed down tight on the plastic parts. I opened it and all came apart. The ring is brass and chrome plated. I wanted to tack solder a piece of metal to join the ring ends. Can't solder to chrome so I ground 1/8" of the chrome off the ends. Tack soldered a 1/4" long piece of #20 tinned solid wire between ends. Can't see without laying on floor. I'm happy.

If anyone has the remains of a really dead clock, I would like to get the little disk that is driven by the ballance wheels. I had the clock working once so maybe the second time I could get it back in the car in that state. Be nice to finish the story.

John

 

Scott.Mac pointed out that my clock was replaced by a 308 GT4 clock sometime in the past...sure enough in the records I found that on 08/20/1984 the clock was replaced (didn't mention what model though). He mentioned there might be a fascia kit to have the correct hands on the clock and rear fascia which is slightly different. Anyone know a source for these? Couldn't find anything in the forums, surprising since I've found *so* much stuff the last week, been very busy reading

 

Hi John
Have this spare clock its quite similar it also works,

Off to Florida on Thursday can bring it and send it to you if you like.
You are more and welcome to it.

Regards

Stephen
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Thank you for the interesting and informative thread on the Veglia Boretti clock. I recently took the clock out of my 1970 Dino and sent it to Palo Alto speedometer. The cost to repair the clock is around $300.00 They said that I might consider the quartz movement. I decided to fix the clock since I know that you always want to keep your car original. They said that one of the items that occurs with the Dino clock is that there are points in the clock that burn out if the battery in the car run down. Since the clock is about 38 years old and it doesn't appear to have been serviced prior to this service, I decided that I will keep the original clock as it is and hopefully it will run for another 38 years.

 

Does anyone have a source for the chrome surround on the gauges or the black plastic bezel?
Saw these that look close, but prior emails to the seller were unanswered and only resulted in him posting the original Dino gauges as a comparison.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220464423684

PS - yeah, I tried Matt Jones at Re-Originals. Not everything on that website is indicative of supply in his inventory.

 

Scott, have you tried Palo Alto Speedometer: http://www.paspeedo.com/

Bill

 

reoriginals has the chrome and black bezel.
ed

 

Hi I know this is a really old thread but its all I can find on the Veglia Borletti clock I have. Its a lovely little clock and I wondered if you can tell me anything about it?
I bought it to go in my old VW but it won't look right so its on ebay, I have had a few questions about it that I don't know the answer to?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160372659881&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

I hope you don't mind my butting in and asking, thanks in advance