How to fix your MGF clock if the adjuster only moves the minute hand...

Hi everyone,

Ever since I bought my MGF back in March, the analogue clock has been displaying the wrong time because I'd not been able to adjust it.  The minute hand would happily turn with the adjuster, but the hour hand wouldn't follow it, instead remaining steadfastly in place. Now I know that I could simply disconnect the car's battery until time caught up with the clock, but I wanted to fix it properly so yesterday I removed the centre panel from the dash and took the clock out.

Here's a video I made this afternoon about what I found and how I fixed it:



I forgot to say in the video that when you put the hands back on, you have to line them up and the easiest way to do this is to put them both upwards at 12:00.

When I tried to re-fit the clock back into the car, I found that you have to re-crimp the bezel down flat, otherwise you can't screw the rear panel back onto the centre dash panel.  Not too difficult a job with a pair of pliars, and a piece of wood to protect the front of the bezel.

Hope it's helpful to someone!

Moved this thread to How-to section

That's a nice hack for the earlier clock. 

The later clock, as fitted to my 2004 TF has a tiny button for time adjustment.  There was a video in the HowTo section, but it seems to have recently fallen foul of YouTube conditions and there is now just a placeholder.  It's easy enough - just poke the little button at 9 o-clock with a paper clip or a biro.  

These later clocks (and maybe the earlier ones too) are known to fail.  I've never seen a how-to for fixing them...

I have a Smiths click that came out of a 1934 Riley, it keeps perfect time & runs for several days on one rewind.
I’ll get around to making a mahogany case one day.
M

BruceTF135 wrote:

That's a nice hack for the earlier clock. 

These later clocks (and maybe the earlier ones too) are known to fail.  I've never seen a how-to for fixing them...

Hi Bruce,

This was the video that inspired me to try repairing my clock:



I suspect that if an MG clock fails it's probably for the same reason.  The Porsche clock uses two capacitors - my MG one only has one.  If your MG clock stops working a replacement capacitor would be my first step to repair it.

SimonR wrote:

BruceTF135 wrote:

That's a nice hack for the earlier clock. 

These later clocks (and maybe the earlier ones too) are known to fail.  I've never seen a how-to for fixing them...

Hi Bruce,

This was the video that inspired me to try repairing my clock:

I suspect that if an MG clock fails it's probably for the same reason.  The Porsche clock uses two capacitors - my MG one only has one.  If your MG clock stops working a replacement capacitor would be my first step to repair it.

Oh!  Thanks, that is potentially a very useful video.  If my clock fails, I'll be trying this.  Without wishing to seem immodest, my soldering skills are a bit better than in the video, so repairing a TF clock might be a piece of cake.