[TA455HO]

How about a timely hint from the purpose of the spring? Think "Instrument Cluster"...

And the picture above is a close-up of the spring...

Anybody? A guess?

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[eaglesan13]

I have no idea, but since you said to go ahead and guess, and since you said to think "Instrument cluster" I'll take a whack at it. Is it for the park brake ratchet? If broken, does the park brake fail to release all the way, thus leaving the "park" light on in the instrument cluster?

Originally Posted by TA455HO

How about a timely hint from the purpose of the spring? Think "Instrument Cluster"...

And the picture above is a close-up of the spring...

Anybody? A guess?

.

[TA455HO]

Not a bad guess. Not the parking brake spring, though. It's entirely enclosed within the instrument cluster. The spring wire diameter is 0.008" or I believe they also call it 2/0 (two ought) so it's pretty small. I'm not aware of spring wire smaller than 0.006" diameter so this is almost the smallest spring wire readily available - extension spring - 100 winds - right hand turn - appears to have been wound on a 1/16" diameter mandrel. I bought a couple of 12" long 1/16" stainless steel rods to use as mandrels and a roll of 0.008" music (spring) wire and I'm going to try winding one myself once this stuff arrives. I do have a Porter spring winder that I've used a lot but mostly with 0.055", 0.063" or 0.085" wire. Much bigger stuff than this, but they claim you can wind down to 0.006", the smallest I can find like I mentioned, so hopefully good to go.

I have to wear reading glasses and also use a strong magnifying glass to really see this spring in any detail. I took the picture and then zoomed in A LOT. That's how I was able to count the coils. No way I could easily do that even with the glasses and magnifier.

Guesses? I thought using the word "timely" in that last post would be a dead give-away.

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[71HO4SPD]

Tic toc tach clock spring.

[njsteve]

Gotta be the spring for pulling the clock points back to the reset position. You shoulda put a ruler next to it for scale.

[hiyabradHO]

Mums the word!

[TA455HO]

Originally Posted by 71HO4SPD

Tic toc tach clock spring.

Good job!

Originally Posted by njsteve

Gotta be the spring for pulling the clock points back to the reset position. You shoulda put a ruler next to it for scale.

Oh yeah! Very specific. You do know your clocks. They are pretty cool. I read this website and then opened up some clocks I have.

http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/restora..._old_car_clock

I manually wound them and none worked at all. First I used DeoxIt D5 (probably the same Radio Shack cleaner they were talking about in that link) and gave them a good wash followed by some compressed air (gently). Two of those started working. I waited for the points to close and checked continuity from red to black on those two and it looked good. So I hooked one up to my bench power supply and set it for 12.6 volts and about 4 amps.

Crank up the volume and you can here the tic toc and the reset. I just got some clock oil today so hopefully I get a better kick and some improvements in operation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZQg3hc0nr0

The 3rd one had the broken spring and I got the wire but still waiting on the mandrels. I could probably take one coil from that end and make it into a loop, but I want to try my hand at wrapping a .008" wire.

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[rexs73gto]

When I 1st saw the spring I thought it was the spring that pulled the PRNDL back to park when you shifted the lever on the column . ??? Was wrong I didn't know there was a wind up spring in the clocks>> .Great info. Thanks