[time-nuts] Car Clock drift - the lowly 32kHz tuning fork crystal specs

Mark Sims holrum at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 9 12:24:04 EDT 2017


My 30 year old Mercedes has an analog clock in it.  I've always been amazed how well it keeps time.  A couple of years ago, I set it for daylight savings time in the spring and did not reset it in the winter.  Next spring it was still accurate to within the resolution of reading the hands.   I was going to let it run for another year, but the car battery needed to be replaced that summer.

I don't know how they implemented the clock,  but whatever they did works damn well.  In the summer around here a car interior can get to over 140F if left in the sun (with obligatory news segments of people cooking eggs and cookies in their cars).  The clock has never been serviced in 30 years and is still ticking like new.


More information about the time-nuts mailing list