Noisy General Time motor

[Johan de Jong]

Hi, does anyone have any experience with this General Time R6436 motor? I'm restoring a Boselli Milano flip clock (aka Icon 30, aka Solari Udine Cifra 6). Most seem to be pulse operated, but this one has a synchronous motor. The motor is working but it is a bit noisy. I wonder whether I should open it up to service it or maybe just add oil behind the transparant sticker. Any advice is welcome

[flipoclock]

I have never gone so far as to actually open one of these gearboxes up, just for the fact that they are indeed (mostly) soldered shut. You can carefully remove the metal casing around the whirligig and potentially try to get one or 2 drops of clock oil towards the shaft and hope that it might make its way to the gearbox because most of the noise that these make does seem to come from the gearbox.

I think I have a parts clock somewhere with this motor, which is running but noisy. I hope to find some time some day to try and open up the gearbox to see whether that gives options to make it more quiet.

[Johan de Jong]

Thanks gentlemen! Prepared with this information I opened up the motor.
The rotor lid was held in place by three indentations in the soft aluminium that were easily bend back so that came off easily.
The gearbox lid was held in place by six indentations that were a lot harder to undo as the metal is a lot sturdier.
In the end I could have saved me the trouble of opening up the latter as the issue was in the bushing on the rotor side. One drop of oil on the inside of the rotor such that it hit the axle solved the issue. It is running silently now
As I had already opened up the gearbox I cleaned and oiled everything there as well of course.

[flipoclock]

Good work! The one that I have here that I intend to open up has the lid for the gearbox soldered in place so that will not be so easy to open up unfortunately.

[Mackey]

This post is full of great info. I'm glad this ended this well.