[time-nuts] Any time-nuttery for spring-wound car clocks?

[Tim Shoppa]

Rick, indeed, one reason I'd like to find some gathered data on these is as
a "bad example". I'd expect the rate variability to be easily measured
between fully-wound and wound-down states and maybe the movement even locks
up and stops ticking while the solenoid winds. I probably could gather this
data myself if I found a unit that even worked!

Sort of like how W7ZOI's EMRFD book has a "bad example" of an oscillator
which is known to produce horrible phase noise. Just so you can build it
and trivially measure (even easily hear) the phase noise.

Tim N3QE



On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 11:56 AM Richard (Rick) Karlquist <
richard at karlquist.com> wrote:

> On 5/4/2020 8:36 AM, Tim Shoppa wrote:
> > Has anyone done any time-nuttery with the mechanical clocks available in
> > cars up through the 1970's?
> >
>
> My experience in the 1960's was that
> it seemed like I don't remember any
> car with one of these clocks that ever
> worked reliably.  Meaning, the time would
> typically be way off, by hours.  I would
> correct the time, and the clock would
> run OK temporarily, but within a few
> days, was way off again.  I also
> remember that these faulty clocks would
> nevertheless startle me when the solenoid
> fired.  It was LOUD.  At the time, I didn't
> know what the sound was due to.  So it was not like
> the clock didn't even run.  Just a guess, but
> perhaps the solenoid didn't fire reliably over
> the wide temperature range the car experienced.
> At least -30 degrees F to +150 degrees F.
>
> Rick N6RK
>