My Tiger Dash Quartz Clock for Under $20

[Donald Berkley]

I may purchase a reproduction Smith’s clock for my 1966 MK1A Sunbeam Tiger in the future. At this time, I still have to fund a lot of other higher priority parts. Surely, in this day and age, there must be a battery powered quartz clock that will work for the short term.

I ordered a quartz clock from ebay ($8.99 + shipping) that looked like it would be a good fit…

Premium 2-1/2″(65mm)Youngtown Quartz Clock Insert, Arabic, Gold, Free Battery
https://www.ebay.com/itm/281966444588

This clock runs off a small 3.7 volt battery that is not hard to obtain (one does come with the clock) but is not a really common battery size. I’ll use the battery that came with the clock for now but I will wire the clock to work with an external rechargeable 18650 3.7 volt battery in the future. The larger, rechargeable 18650 batteries are also 3.7 volts and are popular with hobbyists. (I have several LED flashlights that use the 18650 batteries and I really like them.)

The overall diameter of the housing is a little bit smaller than the dash opening. The clock comes with a wide rubber band that surrounds the housing. I think this is intended to provide a press in fit. Thin material can be placed around the housing, under the rubber band to effect a more snug fit.

The face of the clock is white. There was no option to order the clock with a black face. So, I found a black clock face image close to the diameter that I wanted and used a graphics editor to bring the image to the diameter that I needed.

My only printer at home is an inexpensive laser printer that is not up for the task of the quality printing that I needed for the clock face. I put my image on a thumb drive and went to Staples printing services where a quality print was obtained for 30 cents. Before I went to Staples I used my graphical editor (GIMP) to tile the image onto a larger canvas so that my print would contain multiple clock dial images in case I made a mistake cutting one out.

At this point I was able to assemble the clock for proof of concept and it looked nice. It had black clock hands and of course I needed white hands for the black clock dial. I removed the clock hands again. They come off simply by pulling them gently off. I painted the hour and minute hands white and I painted the second hand red and reassembled the clock.

I am happy with the result. This will serve very nicely for the short term and maybe even longer as it looks pretty good. Total cost is under $20.

Attachments:

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   YoungtownQuartzClock.jpg
   

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   ClockInDash.jpg
   

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