FRED Yachting Clock

[saxonpirate]

Bit of a long shot this, but has anybody out there got one of these FRED Yachting clocks on board... I've never heard of them. I inherited the clock with the boat when I bought it. Its a bulkhead mounted clock, powered by an AA battery. Clock looks fine and works, only problem is it runs so fast that it'll cover 72 hours in 24. The back looks to be sealed in, but I'm wondering... even if I can get at the workings, is there any way you can adjust these things. I've scoured the internet, but there's no sign of FRED Yachting anywhere...

As I said above, its a bit of a long shot.. but does anyone have one of these clocks, and if they do have they had a similar problem.

Been trying to upload a photo of the clock from Photobucket with this wretched new upload system... no joy, the images are at the URL's below.

http://i577.photobucket.com/albums/ss213/saxonpirate/Bits and Pieces/FREDYachting.jpg

http://i577.photobucket.com/albums/ss213/saxonpirate/Bits and Pieces/FREDYachting2.jpg

 

[philip_stevens]

Just a thought. Have you fitted new batteries yet?

I ask, as I had a quartz clock that used to speed up when the battery was getting low. It had a balance wheel that didn't rotate fully when the battery was low, and hence allowed the clock to gain.

 

[prv]

The mechanism looks like a standard one. All sorts of clocks use them, they're turned out in China for pennies and then different makers put them inside an interesting case or behind a face. So if yours is knackered (but try the flat battery hypothesis first) you could always just get a new mechanism and swap it over.

Pete

 

[saxonpirate]

Just a thought. Have you fitted new batteries yet?

I ask, as I had a quartz clock that used to speed up when the battery was getting low. It had a balance wheel that didn't rotate fully when the battery was low, and hence allowed the clock to gain.

Yes, I've tried a new battery Philip and Pete. In fact I've tried batteries of varying states of charge but to no avail. I even wondered if there was a chance it was meant to use AAA instead of AA batteries, but the battery compartment suggests otherwise. Its a shame if I have to bin it, because its a good looking clock, but not much good if I'm running 3 days ahead of myself... ha ha Just checked it, its covering 5 seconds for every 2 on my watch... bargain.

 

[prv]

So put some new guts in it:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Quartz-Cl...K_Home_Garden_Clock_Parts&hash=item19dc5a5b77

Pete

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Just a thought. Have you fitted new batteries yet?

I ask, as I had a quartz clock that used to speed up when the battery was getting low. It had a balance wheel that didn't rotate fully when the battery was low, and hence allowed the clock to gain.

If it had a functional balance wheel, it wasn't a quartz movement. There are no (functional) moving parts except the stepper motor in a quartz movement; time-keeping is achieved by using the very stable electronic frequency generated by a quartz oscillator, divided down electronically to drive a stepper motor. There may be non-functional balance wheels, pendulums or "torsion pendulums" as seen in mantel clocks but they are for show and play no part in the time-keeping.

 

[philip_stevens]

I say quartz, but as you suggest, it may have been a small battery electric clock, but it did run a bit faster when the battery was low.

 

[John Barry]

I say quartz, but as you suggest, it may have been a small battery electric clock, but it did run a bit faster when the battery was low.

Quarts movement accuracy is based on temperature, not on battery charge (although if the charge varies the movement may stop and start again). If the temperature is too high or too low the movement will lose time. They're normally set to gain a small amount of time with the temperature at 18°