How to Fix an Alarm Clock with Brake Cleaner!! A Trick to get a Vintage Travel Clock Ticking Again!

Hey guys, Chris the Automotive Cycler. Welcome back to the channel and welcome to my workshop where as you've gathered by the thumbnail today we're going to see if we can get this little vintage travel clock working without any special tools and without any expense of going off to a clock repair shop which incidentally probably wouldn't even look at this they would send you on your way saying it's not worth it. Let's have a closer look. Now before we get started let's get and explain what this is. Now some of you may not be old enough to remember a travel clock. They're a wind-up alarm clock. They're designed to fold up and go in your case when you're traveling well before mobile phones and this one is branded West Clocks although it's actually made in Hong Kong. They use these clocks from around 1950s probably through this one's probably so first for a start what's this one doing well it's what they call well it's what some people call overwhelmed if you go to wind the winder and it's only got one sometimes they have a separate winder for the alarm this one's only got one for the movement and the alarm and it's wound fully it's tight so overwhelmed is not really a correct term it's wound fully but there's too much friction usually or there's some issue stopping the clock to operate the spring isn't broken if it was broken the winder would keep winding and you would hear noises that indicates the spring's broken so can we fix it and why are we going to fix it using stuff that some clock repairers would class as dodgy well for a start if you took this clock to a repairer they would all say it's not worth it unless you're prepared to pay huge money to have it repaired it's just not economical i could buy a couple of these clocks on ebay in working order for around about ten dollars they are very common they are not worth much for a collectible but it might be your case where it's a family heirloom it belonged to a relative you'd like to get it going you don't want to spend money on it because you know it's just not worth it economically i reckon we can have a go at fixing this now i'm not a professional clock repair person i'm not even really a hobbyist well i fix everything my hobby is fixing everything and i do have a lot of clocks i'm going to show you how we can get this going or how you can get yours going without any expense with what you have at home without buying any specialized tools and if done properly and if there's no physical damage to the there's a fair chance it will last for many years and you'll enjoy being able to use it so as we open it up i'll explain what we're going to do and why it's going to work let's start by removing the clock itself from the case so that we can access the movement now i mentioned that clock repair shops wouldn't look at it i also mentioned that this is not a recommended way to fix a clock if you're going to repair clocks and certainly if you're going to repair clocks for other people you do need to learn the right methods this is a i would call it a hack i guess it's a way of getting a clock going with minimal knowledge and as i've mentioned no specialized tools it was very tight that screw so we've got those two screws removed now the clock repair guys and they are correct the way to repair a clock is not just clean it in dodgy solvent and splash a bit of oil around but in many cases they only stop from from little or hardly any use and have never been serviced so the original oil and this one is going to be at least 50 years old probably pushing 60 the original oil eventually turns to a gum and it just binds everything up so you do not need to know how the clock works you just need to understand that the power from the mainspring that drives the clock cannot transmit down all the little gears to actually run it because there's too much friction there are cases where things get broken and in which case we're not going to be able to show you a hack for that we need to get this back section off next so the winder they nearly always tell you which way to wind the clock if you wind the winder the opposite way it will generally unscrew so we'll unscrew that the alarm adjust knob and the others the alarm knob and the hand winding knob will probably it looks like i'll fit through the casing sometimes they do have to pull off or unscrew so they've got two little screws in the middle here we'll take these out so assuming there's no physical damage to the movement and assuming it hasn't had a long life of hard work and the pivot holes are all badly worn in both those cases it it certainly would not be worth trying to get going okay let's lift this off yep it's going to fit past those two knobs there so we can remove the casing to look at the movement and we'll have a bit of a quick scan nothing seems to be obviously damaged and floating around the important critical part of these movements is the balance wheel you can see there's a hairspring there let me see if we can get a bit closer so that's the balance wheel and the hairspring which is the most delicate part of the movement and that actually oscillates back and forward to allow the clock to run to give you a bit of yeah look it looks like it wants to go but everything's so tight it's just yep it's tick-tocking but it won't keep going so that indicates to me that it is definitely a case here of the lubrication's dried out everything's just bound up so we should be able to fix this movement with pretty much just a spray of solvent we're not going to worry about the main spring and getting that washed out i think most of the most of the friction in this sort of case comes from just the pivot points on the little gears so we're just going to give it a good spray with brake cleaner and i've chosen this because it it's a good solvent and it doesn't leave a residue i think it says that somewhere i also have cleaned clock movements in petrol before and it's just a bit of a cheat's way of getting in and washing out that dried gummed up oil and then leaving the movement freer to be able to run now of course we're going to wash away the lubricant so we need to apply a new lubricant otherwise the clock's going to run dry and it will wear out prematurely so we'll use the brake cleaner and then we'll try a bit of i've got some canned compressed air here just to blow through it we're going to have to be very careful around the hairspring we don't want to put too much pressure on that oh look at that it's actually going to start going there but it's ticking very sluggishly so i think we're going to be able to get this one going and in most cases this will work as i said unless you've got damage or clogged up pivot holes or worn out pivot holes but that's actually running now so i'm sure it won't keep running but we will give it a spray with brake cleaner in a well ventilated area and i'll show you how i do it okay so i'm out in a different part of the shed which is much more ventilated you do have to be careful spraying solvents around without adequate ventilation um i'm going to be very careful not to get anything on any spray on the back of the face so i don't want to soak the label sometimes the labels are actually paper i think this one's a proper tight face but you do have to be a bit careful of that we're not going to just spray it like we're spray painting something i want to keep as much away from the main spring as i can because i don't think we can't wash that out and we don't want solvent soaking into it because it'll dilute what lubricant is in there and we won't be able to get any fresh lubricant in uh it hasn't kept running at all it's very erratic it'll start sometimes and stop others so all the gears and everything i'm fairly confident are in good order it really just needs to flush out with the old oil so i'm just going to grab the can of spray here and spray across the movement not aiming at the main spring and not aiming back towards the face and basically try and wash it as best we can okay you probably couldn't see a lot of that my finger was in the road it's actually running again now now before it dries i'm going to hit it with some compressed air from a can so you don't want to have too powerful compressed air because you can damage that hairspring so let's dry it out and this will have the added benefit of blowing away any residual oil that the brake cleaner has dislodged and i'm not spraying directly on the hairspring i think that'll do it the brake cleaner and solvents usually do evaporate very quickly anyway and it's important to use something that doesn't leave any residue the face is still nice and clean and it's still happily ticking away now can we stop it oh look at that i can't actually stop it now so that's really promising we've freed up the movement oh there we go i've just stopped it but it should start again very easily there we go so i'm sure that's freed things up we've got rid of some dried oil importantly now we need to re-lube all those points so that it's not running dry okay i've zoomed in now so that you can see what i'm doing and i'm going to lubricate the movement now and given that you most that most of you won't have a special clock oil i'm just using if we can see that a high quality machine oil in this case a singer sewing machine oil it is not ideal but it will work i have just put a small dot there on the back of the case so what we're going to oil with is a pin dressmaker's pin i just got this from christian's sewing room she gave it to me before you ask i didn't just sneak in there i'm not that game uh and we just need the smallest smallest amount on the end of it just a little dot i'm not sure if you can see that just a little dot and we're just going to apply that to each of the pivot points over the back plate and it'll gravitate into the pivot point or the it's essentially a bearing and we're going to go through the whole lot just doing that uh absolutely no oil anywhere near the hairspring and no oil on any of the gear teeth we're only oiling all the pivot points the one over here and it's going to be a bit tricky to get to the other end of them and we also do want to oil the end of the little axle that the balance wheel runs on but we have to be extremely careful not to get oil on the hairspring because that will muck up the clock's timing quite severely so that's why you need a really fine pin and i probably need to put some stronger glasses on i have an optivisor here because i don't want to miss where i'm putting the oil so probably the most specialized item you're going to need to fix your clock is some some unless you've got young eyes some vision enhancing apparel and i'll show you what i'll use in a minute but i'll just get a few more dots of oil on here oh that's better i can see nicely so you probably won't be able to make this out but just tiniest amount of oil on the bottom of that axle and then one just above the hairspring without getting oil on the hairspring and of course we need to do all the bottom pivots on the bottom plate and again i stress you do not need to put oil on the gears or any meshing parts of the clock it's just not necessary and excessive oil will just attract dust and cause more problems so now i've finished the oiling and we don't importantly we don't have any oil dripping from the holes or any excess oil anywhere and you can see that balance wheel is fairly flying back and forward now it actually sounds better it sounds really good um yeah i think we can put it back together wasn't it nice of the manufacturers to give us a couple of little parts trays to um to put the screws in and to keep things safe while we're dismantling and reassembling uh okay here we go back ticking away happily that job took us oh i don't know 15 minutes such a quick job uh is it the recommended way to repair a clock no is it a proper service of the clock not technically but this clock wasn't worth fixing most people would throw it out as it was if you have one that means a little bit to you and you'd like to get it going how easy was that sorry about the reflection there it's running beautifully it's been ticking away for 20 minutes hasn't it's actually still keeping really good time there are adjustments on these if you need to adjust the time a little lever on the back that actually lengthens the hairspring if you want the clock to run a bit slower or shortens the hairspring if you want it to run faster this one's actually pretty good so um i'll check the alarm on it but i'm sure that will work fine we know the mainspring is good it's ticking beautifully it sounds great and before i go i did mention these uh a magnivisor one of the best things i've ever bought actually they're really handy for this fine work if you're like me and your your eyes aren't as good as they used to it's a pretty natty little device this isn't a paid advertisement by the way but i use this all the time and you even have at the top here somewhere a little led light so really good things i'll put a link underneath for that so there we go thanks for watching guys a quick repair hack on a little wind-up alarm clock this job would work on most of these little type wind-up clocks whether it's a normal alarm clock or a travel clock it's a great way to fix things if you don't have the knowledge and you don't have the specialized tools um this i'm confident would go for years now again keep in mind that these travel clocks weren't used all the time they quite often were only used when people went on holidays so very rarely these are actually quite worn usually they're in pretty good condition they just need a bit of a rinse out essentially you know for want of a better term and re-lube and away you go so there's a bit of a hack for you apologies to all the professional clock repair people you won't get anything out of this because it's not how you do it but in some cases to save something from being thrown from landfill it's worth having a go and it's pretty satisfying to do it thanks for watching guys we'll catch in the next video bye for now