My first GE flip cock radio repair

[daanpape]

Hello,

This is my first post on this lovely forum. I only recently started being interested in General Electric clocks and I have 3 of them now. Two are rotating GE clocks and I recently acquired a General Electric clock radio which is a real flip clock. The exact type number is unknown because the label fell of but it is the 220V 50Hz variant of the GE 7-4310. The seller said it was working fine but after receiving the clock it was clear there are some issues:

• The fuse of the radio was bridge with copper wire, this is something I'm going to work later on.
• The clock is not flipping.

I opened the casing and I can see that the motor is spinning but the gears are not in good shape and I suspect they are slipping. Before undertaking some action I thought I would ask some pointers on this forum:

• It seams these gear boxes are not serviceable but I saw a video on youtube from this forum that you can open them with a pocket knife. But where could I find replacement gears.
• Would it be possible to oil the gears to get it working without opening, would some penetrating oil be ok or should I use some special kind of oil. The motor spins ok but has trouble starting.
• Where do you guys look for replacement gearboxes/motor assemblies. The motor is spinning fine so that is not broken and the clock mechanism also works when I move it by hand.

Thank you for this forum and the nice community.

[Johan de Jong]

Hello Daan and welcome to this forum!

With the Copal motor gearbox there are two common issues:
1) The first gear (the one connecting to the rotor gear) is broken/worn. A fix for this is described here: https://www.flipclockfans.com/forum/...-a-copal-motor
2) The last gear (the one on the outgoing axle) is cracked and slipping on its axle. A fix for this is described here: https://www.flipclockfans.com/forum/...al-gear-repair
Looking at the pictures you attached I think your gearbox may be suffering from the second issue.

To open up the gearbox I drill out the three posts just far enough until you can remove the plate with a little force. If you do this carefully you can later snap the plate back onto the posts.

When the rotor is stuck you can get it going again by oiling the axle. At the gearbox side this is easy as you already opened up the axle. At the rotor side you can put a drop of oil on the inside of the rotor and let it flow down on the axle. This video by Mackey shows perfectly how and why this works:

You can use any light oil. I use motor oil, but sewing machine oil will do as well. (Do not use WD40!!)

Replacement motors/gearboxes are hard to get. These are not in production for a long time. You can only them from a donor clock that has no hope left in it. That is why we go to all this length to restore them

Hope this helps. If you need more information, just let me know.

Johan