308 clocks

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All,

The clock in my 308 died a while back and I did a bit of research and figured out how to repair it. Basically, the Veglia Quartzo clock used in the Fiat is exactly the same, with the exception of the face, the hands, and the winder at the end of winding stem.

I managed to find a functional clock for close to $60 (including shipping) and set about swapping out the various bits... The result is a working clock which I will re-assemble (once I get a piece of glass, as I can't abide the plastic) and install.

I took a lot of pictures of all steps and can expand on all this if anyone is interested.

An additional observation here is that all the internal gears appear to be precisely the same.

Let me know the level of interest in all this.

Best,

John.
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Sure, please post details!

 

Just did a rebuild on my 1982 308i clock. It may be a challenge getting a glass lens as the hole for the adjustment stalk. I opted to revert to polycarbonate lens.

 

Does crowndog still offer glass lenses?

 

As there seems to be interest, I will devote some time to relate my experiences in getting my clock to work again.

Disclaimer: There is almost always a better way to do things so please take my input in that context!

The assumption is that you have a clock that is not working and have removed it from the console.

The most difficult task I have encountered in this is to remove the chrome bezel. I copied a descriptive of how I tackled this to Robert (AKA "Crowndog") and he kindly posted it elsewhere. Here it is again:

Just to let you know, I managed to get the chrome bezel off and it was quite a trick! I had a very good look at this under magnification and pondered best approach for the longest time before actually taking a screw driver to the blasted thing...

After removing the clock itself from the lower console, here's what I did...

Definition: What I call "fold" or "fold over" is the back part of the chrome bezel that wraps around the clock body, holding it tightly in place (and making it a pain to remove!).

1. If you look at the rear of the chrome bezel where it 'folds over' the clock's body (i.e., the plastic housing), you will notice two things. The first is what appears to be a crimp in the chrome bezel into a notch in the plastic at 12 o'clock. The only purpose I see this serving is to keep the bezel from rotating. The second thing is that the bezel has an area at the opposite side (at 6 o'clock) that is different. This does not have a 'fold over', i.e., if the entire bezel was like this, it would come off very easily. It almost looks as if someone has made a clean cut to remove the metal that folds over the back of the plastic housing. In the middle of this part of the bezel, there is a notch that locates the black plastic inner bezel. The latter is a bit of a give-away that the fold over folds over two things (not just the plastic housing)...

2. Using a very small (eye glass adjustment) flat-head screwdriver, carefully pry out the "crimped" part of the bezel. Do this just enough to remove the crimp (so that it looks like the rest of the folded part of the bezel) and no more. This should allow the chrome bezel to be rotated (a bit of force may be required to actually do this due to age... Turn it a bit in one direction, then the other). What you want to do is to rotate the bezel 180 degrees such that the un-folded part is close to the notch at 12 o'clock.

Photo 1 shows the (very slight) crimped bit closest to you with the 'no fold over' bit on the opposite side. (This photo was taken after the bezel was removed, so the crimped bit has already been pried out sufficient to the task of allowing rotation...)

3. An observation here is that the chrome bezel is folded over BOTH the lip of the plastic housing AND the black plastic inner bezel that comes off in disassembly. As such, the fold covers half as much of the plastic housing as you think it does just by looking at it.

4. This is the 'very gently'/'be very careful' part: Rotate the bezel such that the point where the 'fold' starts is in the middle of the notch in the plastic housing. Use the small screw driver to pry the fold up and over the housing. When I did this, I managed to deform the fold a bit, but it should be possible to remove the bezel with almost zero deformation. If you apply squeezing force to the plastic housing at the point or removal, it makes the lip of the fold a lot easier to release. The important bit here is that you only need the fold to clear the plastic housing itself and not the black inner bezel (which can remain with the chrome bezel for the time being). Picking the point of release at the notch allows you to see when you have cleared the plastic housing (lighter in color than the black inner bezel).

Photo 2 shows the deformation to the chrome bezel. This is the original 308 clock after the bezel has been removed.

5. Once you have a start, it is not too difficult via gently prying, squeezing (the plastic housing), and rotation to gently remove the chrome bezel.

Photos 3 and 4 show this process of rotation of the Chrome Bezel. Photo 3 shows the tough part where the Chrome Bezel has just cleared the rim of the plastic housing (and NOT the black plastic 'inner bezel'). Continuing to rotate it will clear it completely from the housing. Note that this was on the replacement clock, so I was not worried about a little more damage to the bezel and plastic housing as I would not be re-using them. Also, these were harder to remove on the replacement clock than on the original 308 clock and you can see from the first two photos that there was less damage to the bezel and lip of the plastic housing.

It is probably best to practice removing the bezel on something other than your original! I didn't and consider myself lucky that I did not totally destroy the thing... It goes without saying that patience is most important here. Note also, that these various deformations should not be visible once everything is back together and in the car.

More to come...
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Back again...

I searched specifically for 'Veglia Quartzo' and there seemed to be quite a few that looked similar to the 308 (apart from the face, etc.). Key to the decision making here was the plastic housing, the location of the screws that held the face on, the location of the stem (at 6 o'clock), etc. The dimensions were obviously important (if you can get them from the seller) to be absolutely sure...

As such, I settled on a working unit from a Fiat. When it arrived, I tested it to make sure that it was working, did a lot of comparison to my original (dimensions, etc.) and then removed its Chrome Bezel. IMPORTANT NOTE: Were I to do this again, I would have removed the stem knob first! With the bezel off, there is less clearance to work with.

Removing the stem knob was a bit of a pain... I received valuable input from Robert (AKA Crowndog) about this. It basically pulls straight off. The trick is to find a way to grasp the stem itself such that you are pulling the stem knob off the stem and not the entire stem out of the clock mechanism. My approach was to use needle-nosed pliers to grasp the stem between the knob and the bezel. As there is insufficient force to lock this such that the stem will not slip, I used some vice-grips to grip the plier grips. There is likely a better way to do this, but with the vice grips locking the plier grips, the stem did not slip when I applied force to remove the stem knob. I accomplished the latter by using a small screw driver as a lever between the pliers and the bottom of the stem knob. I had several small screw drivers with varying blade widths such that as the stem knob started to come off, I incremented the blade width to minimize the probability of deformation of the knob. Also, I made sure that I did not work the stem knob at a single point (so that it would deform), but rotated it frequently for even pressure.

Photo 1 shows the clock as it arrived (not really red, I was just wearing a red shirt that reflected off the chrome!). The Chrome Bezel was quite different from my original clock, but almost exactly the same where it mattered, i.e., the shape where it attached to the plastic housing. Also, it did not have the small crimp opposite the 'no crimp' part of the bezel, so could rotate (somewhat) freely.

Photo 2 shows the rear of both clocks... Identical (the newer looking one is the original) apart from the Fiat clock missing lock washers.

Photo 3 shows the differences between the stems... As it turned out, the bit that the stems went on were identical. Note that the Chrome Bezel has already been removed on the original clock.

Photo 4 compares the two clocks with Chrome Bezel removed. You can see that there is more damage to the lip of the plastic housing on the Fiat clock (my bad in prying the Chrome Bezel too aggressively!).
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Next in the continuing saga...

In order to open things up and have a look, you must first remove the Chrome Bezel. Once this is done, you can remove the three brass nuts (circled in red in Photo 1) and remove the plastic housing to reveal the mechanism (Photos 2, 3, and 4).

Before continuing, a bit about why my original clock failed...

Having gotten to this level of disassembly with my original clock (before looking into getting a replacement, etc.), I was able to supply power to the unit and then measure voltages at various points on the small pcb, across motor terminals, etc. No need to get into the details here, suffice it to say that the motor is what I believed gave out.

Inspecting the various moving bits, all seemed in order with zero wear. Manually turning the motor cog, everything 'downstream' seemed to work, i.e., second hand movement, etc.

In light of all the above, I thought that if it were possible, the best plan would be to simply swap out the face, hands, etc. to the functional mechanism.

Photo 5 is after further dis-assembly, but inserted here to illustrate a few things:
- The holes for the screws that secure the face and the hole for the stem are in the same location (see the orange circle in the photo), therefore the faces can be swapped out.
- The screws that secure the face seem to be different, but it is only the screw heads that are different. As such, the holes that these screw into are the same, so I could use the original 308 clock screws in the Fiat mechanism (Blue circles 1 and 2 in the photo). Minor point, but keeps it looking totally original.
- Although the stem knobs are not the same, the stems are identical so can be swapped over, again keeping it looking as the original.

The red arrow pointing at the second hand is for the next installment.

More later...
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Are we having fun yet?... Back to it!

Obviously the hands are quite fragile, so extreme care must be taken in removal, etc.

My experience here was totally different from everything that I have read and also everything I have heard from those I have communicated with!

In photo 1 you will see the points where I worked to remove these. In grasping the bit of the stem to remove the second hand, the entire stem came out! Maybe I was doing it wrong, but I could find no other way to grasp this without touching the fragile second hand itself (maybe this is what you are meant to do, but I initially attempted this and it did not budge, so I backed off for fear of damaging it). If you return to my previous post, you can see what the second hand looks like when it is still attached to the stem: the arrow is where I believe it is meant to detach if you do it right (and not like I did!)...

This happened on both clocks by the way, so I was likely doing it wrong.

If this happens to you, then you will find that bits of the mechanism become loose, as this stem serves to hold things together. Don't panic... Remain calm, more on this later...

I failed to mention that I removed this by using needle nosed pliers, grasping the part of the stem indicated by the right red arrow in photo 1. The trick is finding a way to leverage this without bending it or coming into contact with/damaging other fragile parts on the clock face.

Next comes removal of the other hands. I used a very small (eyeglass) screwdriver to gently pry the minute hand free. If you look at photo 1 (middle red arrow), you will see precisely the small gap where the screwdriver blade was inserted. Again, I did not use one spot only, but pried from different locations. The hour hand did not have the same small gap where I could insert the screwdriver blade (left red arrow), so I had to gently work on the hand itself until a gap appeared.

After this, the face can be removed via the two screws. I strongly recommend using a screwdriver that has precisely the right blade thickness to avoid damaging the heads of these visible screws and also the surface of the face.

Once the face has been removed, the adjustment stem along with its cog and spring will fall out.

If you have the same experience that I did with the entire second hand stem coming out, you will likely have additional bits coming loose (see photo 2), which can easily be set back in place (see photo 3).

When putting all this back together, it is important that all of the various cogs and bits line up correctly (see photo 4). You can see here that I have put the face and hour and minute hands back on and am lining up the second hand stem. The circled bits show that it is not fully home and also the location of the small cog that the stem needs to go into. Once this is all aligned, I used a flat surface against the second hand to drive it home properly. This ensured that I did not bring uneven pressure on the second hand (damaging it) and also assured that the force employed was perpendicular to the face.
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So, to recap...

- Removed Chrome Bezels
- Removed plastic housings
- Removed hands and faces
- Swapped 308 hands and faces over to functional Fiat mechanism

Reassembly was fairly straightforward: I basically had my original face and hands from the 308 clock mounted on the Fiat mechanism and then put back into the 308 plastic housing.

I then applied power and the second hand started moving! I let it run for a few minutes to make sure that minute hand and hour hand were tracking properly.

My intent is to source a glass crystal to replace the plastic, so final assembly and installation in the console will happen later (replacing the Chrome Bezel will be interesting... I sincerely hope that it will be easier than removal!).

There are other bits to consider, e.g., setting the hands to 12:00, etc. but these are somewhat trivial.

Hope this has been helpful.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Best,

John.

 

Brilliant Post John!! What a great job!

 

those might well be "308" clocks, but like a lot of things they changed over the years.

The early clocks for 308s should have "blue/white" hands to match the speedo and tach needles..

So all of these eBay itmes are for later cars, with black hands.

I also assume at some point the lighting changed, from green (early) to red???

I paid $500 each for my blue/white ones.

 

We are talking clocks for a Fiat and a Ferrari here... The clocks in the pictures in my previous posts are the original one from my 84 308 QV and one from a Fiat... I just used the working Fiat innards. As such, everything you see in the pictures that is orange and red was from the Fiat clock. The hands that are blue with white tips are from the 308 clock. Additionally, the original blue/green tint in the illumination was provided by a transparent blue/green ring. The Fiat clock had an orange ring (see photo for comparison). These rings sit inside the bezel against the clock faces.

Apart from the paint scheme, the hour and minute hands are exactly the same.

The point of this exercise was to get the original clock working again while containing cost. It seems that Veglia produced the exact same plastic body and internal mechanism for a number of different cars... The faces, hands, chrome bezels, etc. were different, but the internals were the same. As such, by switching out the internals and keeping the 308 clock's plastic body (or 'housing' as I call it) as well as the original bezel configuration, tinting ring, face, screws, stem knob, and hands it is basically still all original.

I had contacted the place in North Hollywood for an estimate and they told me they would replace the internals and charge me $440 plus shipping.

The bottom line here is that if you have a clock that looks OK but doesn't work, then what I have documented may be the best way to get it fixed.
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That's cool!

Thanks for posting...

 

Just a bit more info which may be of use to anyone attempting this kind of repair... There are some visual differences in the bezels that may seem to be a show stopper, but aren't really...

There is a black plastic piece that sits on top of the lighter colored plastic housing. This black piece has a groove that engages the plastic housing to keep it in place. The clear plastic lens (that we all wish was made out of glass!) sits within this black plastic piece. The chrome bezel is crimped over both the lip of the plastic housing and the black plastic piece (when I removed the chrome bezel, I did it in such a way that it cleared the plastic housing lip, but not the black piece). These pieces (black plastic, lens, lighter colored plastic housing) were identical in both the Fiat and 308 clocks.

Within this sits the tinted ring that gives whatever illumination hue the application requires. These were very close in form factor and would be interchangeable (using the smaller screw heads that the Fiat clock had) if you wanted to have a Fiat colored clock in you Ferrari!

So... The chrome bezel holds all this together and to the plastic housing. These bezels are different in appearance.

Photo 1 is what I am calling the black plastic piece. This is from the original 308 clock and is precisely the same as what came out of the Fiat clock. The plastic lens is still in it.

Photo 2 is of the black plastic piece with plastic lens intact snapped back into the plastic housing after the chrome bezel has been removed. This is the original 308 clock.

Photo 3 is some detail of the chrome bezel from the original 308 clock. Note that it has a plastic insert that the Fiat didn't (the Fiat had a large chrome bezel, which is maybe why it was harder to remove). Both the Fiat and 308 chrome bezels can fit on the same plastic housing (and hold everything together), but are different in appearance externally.
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What is the thickness of the stock plastic lens? Can a glass lens be fitted?

On one hand, I have heard that glass replacements are too thick to fit within the bezel. On the other hand, Unobtainium Supply offers a glass lens (Crowndog's originally) that I have never heard of problems.

(This is a timely thread: the gear to set the time on my clock seems to have turned to mush, or at least stopped working for some reason.)

 

My stock lens was 0.085" the replacement was around 0.074 or 0.078 fit perfect.

 

I'll defer to Waymar's input on thickness (yet to measure mine), but will say that it needs to be cut such that the dimensions are very close to the original plastic. The reason here is that the lens fits snugly into a black plastic ring with the surface of both being flush (therefore thickness is of importance).

You can see what I mean in the photos attached. The first shows the black plastic ring with the lens inserted. This is a very snug fit with zero play such that the lens 'pops' in and out. The second shows the lens out so you can see a notch that locates the lens within the black plastic ring.

As this (and the various other bits) are all held together by the chrome bezel, if the glass is too thick, then it will add to the overall thickness and make it nigh impossible to reassemble. This is why having glass that is slightly thinner than the original plastic works.
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Back again...

One thing that I noted was that the heads of the two screws that held the face on were larger on the 308 clock than they were on the Fiat clock. The thread sizes were the same so that the screws for the 308 clock could fit in the Fiat clock and vice versa.

So why the difference?...

Here is something that I discovered...

When reassembling the clock, the colored ring fits inside the plastic housing and onto the clock face. There is a gap between the circumference of the clock face and the plastic housing and the colored ring serves to fill this gap such that the light coming from the light bulb filters through it, thereby giving the desired color.

This colored ring has a notch for the adjustment stem. In order to locate this in assembly, there are two additional notches that engage the heads of the screws that secure the clock face. These notches are larger in the blue/green colored ring for the 308 than they were in the red one for the Fiat for some reason.

Sooo... you need the right size of heads on the screws to fit the colored ring notches. QED.
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Had the same problem some years ago. Reason was, the stem to set the time and gear inside had separated and the stem slipped inside the gear.
Had to open the clock and secure the gear on the shaft with some glue. No more problems since.

Best Regards
Martin

 

Hi Martin,

Just to sanity check here, did you have to totally dis-assemble your clock to fix the gear? Assuming so, how hard was it for you to remove the chrome bezel? Is there an easier way to do this (from your perspective) than what I have documented in my earlier posts?

This is just to help out anyone that will need to do this (or if I need to do it again!).

Always open to a better way to do something...

Additionally, if anyone out there needs replacement gears, etc. I have some. Let me know.

Best,

John.

 

John,the way you disassembled your clock was the same way I did it on my clock in my old GT4.
My adjustment cog would spin on the stem knob so I pulled it apart and used some epoxy glue to keep it from spinning..

 

Hi Maurice,

Input appreciated... Did your second hand come completely out (meaning the entire stem that holds the internals together) as happened on the two that I disassembled?

Also, now that I have access, I shall likely pro-actively apply something to the adjustment cog... The last thing I want to happen is to get it all back together and in the car only to have this cog bugger up!

Thanks again,

John.

P.S. I just missed out on a lot of three non-working Veglia clocks for spares... $15 or so, Dang! Note to self: Keep an eye out and jump on these when I see them!

 

Crowndog & I have shipped well over 100 glass clock crystals without any fit problems reported. Unobtainium's crystal spec is:

THICKNESS: 2.1mm[0.082"]

Slightly thinner than the OEM lens which runs about 2.16mm[0.085"].

 

I don't remember needing to remove the second hands as my problem was with the small cog on the back,but that was over 10 yrs ago.