Beautiful 1967 Bulova Clock Radio Repair Attempt

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to amateur repair time today we are going to work on this cool clock radio here I picked this up at the flea market a couple weeks ago I've never seen one quite like this but it's nothing too incredibly special I've seen things uh very similar to this they just had a different look but this this one just has a really cool look and it is a blla how cool is that everybody loves boliva for their cool watches um so it's a clock radio AM FM AFC I always forget what that exactly stands for auto frequency control is that it I don't know but the the problem is it looks like it has corrosion uh and you know the corrosion usually is from batteries so I don't know why there is corrosion all over the outside of it but it might be a little chore getting this thing to work we may not be able to get up to work at all if we can't we'll finish it off in this video what does Shango call it EOL we might EOL it I hope not I don't like that crap I like trying to save them so we'll see um but uh yeah so it's got some corrosion on it it's got a cool FM AM little dial down there I always just like how they um choose to design these things it's just an interesting to me the art of it you know um I would love to hear this thing work again what is this little 342 thing there I guess that's an alarm of some sort that's interesting so we've got tuning off one is there something else for an alarm oh yeah there's some stuff on the back okay so let's see on the back there's the bottom just a couple [Music] screws I just noticed there's no cord does it only run on batteries like what's up here what's going on with this it sure looks like it ought to take a power cord doesn't it we'll figure it out I hope the whole inside's not rotted away it sure is scary isn't it when you see corrosion on the outside it makes you wonder what's the inside look like right so this looks like it must hold it together oo it's loose set alarm set time okay so that's kind of typical like you would just see on a regular alarm clock and then automatic and manual so let's see if I can finger loosen this thing all right how bad do you think it's going to be folks all right so tell me and and I'm going to I'm I'm going to rate it from 1 to 10 the damage assessment okay so how bad do you think it's going to be whenever we open it so one would be um there's hardly any damage it's just cosmetic you pop the batteries in and you wouldn't even need to clean it up and it would be able to readed batteries if this is a battery one it looks like it is that's one 10 would be throw it in the trash it's impossible to rebuild it or uh there's no way you're going to be able to rebuild it why is this thing stuttering what in the world my my lamp's going crazy look at that Flash Dance um so 10 would be it's just completely destroyed it's at up major parts of the circuit board where there's resistors falling off the board stuff like that what do you think 1 to 10 now keep in mind there's already corrosion visible on the outside of it 1 to 10 I'm going to guess it's a three this is kind of cool I've never seen one like this okay okay those are the two knobs that are turnable from the back I swear I didn't look at it but I think that's a three that's a three that's not that bad so this is a little needle file Okay so a significant problem would be is if if these fell if these fall apart whenever I mess with them ah they're strong they're not going to fall apart now let's see if the wi is going to fall off is that going to break nope it's fine too let's check the other ones that one's not bad at all so that would be like a one that would be like a one and I'm just making this up as I go folks this isn't like some official scale or something okay that wire has broke no big deal can be soldered back on this the other thing too is this box could be replaced and this one could be replaced you can see how they're held in you can put new ones on it I don't have new ones but I could order new ones but I don't think I need to yeah that wire broke but we can solder that back on we can get creative with it I think that's completely savable and this board doesn't have any damage to it that I can tell um and you know of the era I would not be surprised if it just works fine once you get power to it now why are they using two different things of power I guess it's one for the clock and one for the radio but um let me think one and a half I mean are they all joined together and that's just how they did it I don't um that connects to there and then it goes down or it's going out the front I guess to the clock how are they running a clock on one and a half volts I don't know I don't know what that's up I don't know what's up with that okay um all right so I'm going to get something on here so I don't mess up my beautiful uh towel and then I'm going to uh get a wire brush and clean this up as best I can and then I'm going to hit it with some rubbing alcohol to try to clean it up even better and we'll just see how good we can get her to look all right so I have hit it with this wire brush look people this is amateur R okay don't if you're looking for a professional job on this you need to look elsewhere so this is just the first cleaning I'm just knocking off all the the obvious right so this is what we're at step one I'm feeling confident this ain't my first rodeo people I've dealt with corrosion before remember I work in a video game store we see this all the time been there done that okay so we got broken wires all over the place and I still need to clean this up a little bit we got broken wires all over the place so one is the one that broke here so we'll put that back after we clean it all that one's still fine these are still fine but then we have this one and I was thinking what in the world is that it doesn't look like it goes anywhere but then I started thinking I was really using my brain that's probably the antenna wire bet that even pulls off doesn't that look like it comes loose let's Zoom yeah that comes out of there don't it the wires just broke off of it and I I don't think we did it you saw us take the back door off somebody else done did that someone else has hurt this baby yeah so that must go on that pink wire and you're supposed to unplug it whenever you take the back door off this is strange to me this is a strange little setup it's big enough that I I thought that it would take a power cord um it's probably 5 and 1/2 in in by 5 and 1/2 in something like that maybe 5 in wide 5 and 1/2 Ines tall so it kind of looked like it was like a little desk radio but it's battery powered um it I think we'll be able to get the radio going once we get the power right that clock worries me though you know the clocks sometimes those I guess there's some kind of little electric motor um sometimes those don't survive the years it's probably been 50 years on this thing we'll see if we can find a date on one of the 64 I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that this is a 64 um maybe [Music] uh is that from the 60s this is the game I play in my head is this from the '90s no much older than that does it look like something from the 80s no it does not it looks older than that with this kind of stuff going on um does it look like it's from the 70s it's kind of got that Atomic look which is 60s or 50s you know but it's not the 50s it's not that old [Music] um early 60s yeah mid I would guess mid 60s that's probably the date 64 that's probably what that means so there may be one on one of the [Music] capacitors if we look carefully we may be able to find a date on one of those okay so I'm going to get some uh um uh rubbing alcohol what do they call it is it rubbing alcohol I'm going to get some alcohol and some um Q-tip and clean this up and see how see what that does I think usually that cleans it up much better all right so isopropyl alcohol I always call it rubbing alcohol I know it's not the same thing but it's easier for me to say rubbing than Isa proofil I got it at Publix's where was this crap made it's just water right isn't it just water um inactive ingredient water yeah there we go okay so used the Q-tip went to town on it and it's much better not perfect but that was about as good as I could get it what I've done before in the past if you have one that's just roached like this is you can solder it like you can put some solder to solder this wire to the base because the problem you're going to get is if there's corrosion where that wire touches the the this copper plate you know it won't conduct and then I also noticed as I was looking through here check this out they thought of everything radio battery clock battery all right so I think I've got that one clean enough to work so I'm going to slide a battery in it and see if the clock does anything so I slid a battery in let's see how would we ever know I wonder if they make noise if it's a it's moving it is definitely moving keep watching you'll see it you know believe me do you okay let's see maybe I'm crazy let's let's set it let's see if we can set it okay okay we'll set it on one of the lines it ain't working it ain't moving well that was a big let down I could have swore it was moving all right now so here's here's the next technical thing you do you move the battery so we're going to roll the battery around now I could get the multimeter out all right I got to check it with the multimeter and I don't know if I don't know how they're going to run a clock with one battery I mean that kind of it's hard to believe it doesn't need that the other forter kind of wired like if if you look okay see the red wire here so it goes there and then it connects to this red wire which goes into the clock okay but there's also a white wire I don't know where the white wire is connected but this yellow wire comes up here connects and then goes also into the clock I mean it's labeled but I don't I don't know that it'll work with one battery okay so I'm going to clean up these next all right so I finished cleaning that up the best I could and I busted out my multimeter and uh it's good so we've got 1.6 volts from the red wire to the white wire so if you look down here they're using like a little Junction here so I didn't check on the actual battery I checked from the wire to the wire okay um and then on this one it's a big hot mess too but uh it starts down here which is where that yellow wire came from so I checked from here I still need to get that a little bit of I didn't get anything on that yet I need to try to clean that up as good as I can but I checked from there to there and I got 1.6 volts and then I checked from there to there and I got like you know 3.2 or whatever 3 point whatever and then I checked from there to there and I got 4.8 or whatever I think it was almost five so basically you know they're connected in series and then to here I'm getting like 6 and a half volts out of four batteries um so all five of these batteries are fine they're they're connected as they should be so I haven't tried to turn it on yet and the clock is definitely not working make sure nothing's going to short out in the back if it tries to come on all right tuning let's set it on am since we have the uh am antenna inside of it am and let's see if she'll do anything I don't know that I can tell anything's going on come on baby well it seems just completely dead well the good news is we're going to be able to clean the bezel on the front because I had to take it all the way apart the bad news I haven't found anything wrong with it yet um I'm thinking maybe the switch so I have taken this little plate off the switch which allows me to get to kind of a little bit of the internals of the switch we're going to spray some contact cleaner in there and then work it back and forth see if that does anything for us uh I did disconnect the speaker and then tested the ohms and it's testing at 8 ohms which is not impedance but it's close enough um and then I soldered it back so basically if you if you check it in circuit it'll read almost a dead short usually on most radios but I disconnected it and this is measuring 8 ohms so yeah it's probably working and it looks fine um so that wasn't it I thought maybe we just you know weren't getting any volume at all because of that now what I could do is start recapping it but I wish I had a way to inject a signal I don't have a signal in injector I actually do but I've got some it's like a huge one I don't know how it works um and I know you can kind of just mess around and make one um now that I can get to everything I might just turn put the batteries back in it and then just press around with my hand to see if I can find an area where there's an actual Amplified signal um well unfortunately when I measure the voltage I'm getting 6.68 on the board but the problem is I'm getting 6.68 everywhere on the board every you test has the the same voltage I think I see the problem there's no ground like the there's only the voltage is connected to the potentiometer that's the volume pot but the ground's not connected anywhere so the ground connects over to that where I was saying there's corrosion but the only other thing that it goes to is it goes to this um so if there is a b bad ground between here wherever that is going to on the other side of that clock and this radio nothing would work which is exactly what we're getting so yeah I've got six volts on the board but that's that's uh that's checking it from here to there that's not actually connected to this especially now that I've taken it loose so I need to figure out how the ground gets on this board and then set up a jumper wire and see if that gets this any kind of response if it had a lot of corrosion on whatever the ground is it would completely kill everything I'll bet the ground problems right there like where the one wire connects to the other [Music] hu deeper and deeper we go so this is the damnest design I've ever seen now you saw what I'm trying to point out the ground from the batteries that says radio runs into the clock that's the only place it goes so it attaches to this little strip I wonder if that little screw is supposed to do it it attaches to this strip uh which has a piece that's riveted on right there okay that is attached to the side of the clock right here now it doesn't touch anything so there is no connection from the ground to anything except where it runs into that clock you saw that okay so it runs inside the clock I have taken the clock apart now we may be able to fix it um let's see if the balance is broke or anything the balance is not broke the the the hairspring is fine so I don't know there's something going on there you know what the hell is that no Miss design like that okay so the clock is a different thing we'll figure that out but look at this design so that that ground wire from the battery runs in here and then it's solders to that pin it's the yellow wire it solders to that pin that maybe is just attached to this Frame which would ground maybe the face plate well when I checked that continuity there was no continuity between that and the face plate so the face plate was not grounded right so then I suppose the face plate is touching this which would ground that that's plastic so how the hell are they getting the ground to this board what am I missing here there's one con that's not touching anything how the hell are they doing it how are they getting a ground over to this board look there's no connections to this board except this and the antenna wire there that's it now there is one other little thing here what the hell is this so I don't know what that is um so I suppose one of these anchors was what was grounding it I don't know just guessing maybe this plate see the plate would have been touching there but that's not grounded all right so if I can find out where the ground entered the board I can just run a jumper from there to there and that would fix the whole thing but I don't I don't get it obviously all right so I've T tore it into a million pieces and if you look really close it's hard to tell but there is a trace that goes all the way around the outside of the board and they have been very careful to solder that screw to the trace so that's the ground um which is connected to this metal bar on the bottom that the pots are connected to and that the the U dial assembly or whatever is connected to so what I've done is I put a the the voltage is attached to the pot so the ground I have just put a jumper from the ground of the batteries straight to the metal um case of that and I'm hearing something now so we're going to try to I'm hearing static so we're going to try to tune it in and see if anything will tune in I think we're on I think we're on a.m. oh yeah this must be [Music] FM first I want to thank you for [Music] listening 621 FEMA that's 1800 621 is your last weekend to enter to [Music] you Charlotte's best mix of the 9s 20 tox 1079 that's a little bit off okay and keep in mind that's what no this is the antenna so throw it over to am and you know my test is always to see if I can get 650 [Music] in here in Charlotte we have a huge Channel at 1110 it'll probably be so loud we can't even handle [Music] it [Music] thanck possession is key and at this point it just has to be some movement through the Midfield really loud it's just the it's a clear channel station it's night right now and it's four miles from [Music] here but for his honesty as [Music] [Music] well 103 Philly seventh straight Los encaging you to get on the road very defended his support for tffs and make quick references I groom 31 points 14 rebounds and S it's a great way for people to learn more about what we offer and to be okay so there is a so 650 a.m. number one Audio company 650 a is WSM out of Nashville um uh probably still playing the Grand old Opry maybe um but uh the channel just above it is a sports channel at like 680 I think Isel there is still great demand [Music] the8 lost around the stadium that fell out of somebody's pants or something bu and and he felt shaky about that you guys have him as we started he couldn't he couldn't make our rotation right now we're going to have the no C to and I remember I was probably 11 12 years old and I got they're talking about country say must be [Music] 650 back in the early 90s Travis trit is our Spotlight artist tonight we got a couple more Travis songs as we celebrate not only his birthday back on February 9th but also his hoery anniversary which is February 29th 1992 and since there is no February 29th this year cting more tra again sh [Music] next yeah sounds like it's going to be a DX we're actually getting all kinds of channels okay so um I need to figure out though how they intended the ground to get to that plate I don't I I don't get it the ground goes up into here on that pin then what the hell do that do it don't even make any why would they do that we're about to get somebody from boliva on the phone so it's the yellow wire what are they doing I just don't understand why they would do it that way H all right so yeah so if I can't figure out how to get it to work as originally intended I will just put a jumper from the battery pack over to the U where we've got it now you just solder a wire to it so it won't be that big of a deal but um that may be though why the clock's not working too you know so I'm going to just keep looking at see if I can figure out the original intent and then uh if we need to just do some jumpers or something okay the whole thing is it's the freaking alarm the alarm was set because of the way this was set so they have it rigged up some way where if I if I check continuity there's continuity between here this metal plate which is attached to this metal face and these studs the studs that hold the thing in several of the studs are connected to that plate through what I thought was that plastic front but whatever somehow they're conducting electricity through it it's not for me to know I guess I'm going to take it apart though because I got to clean it okay so the ground is not the ground connects to that or should connect to that and then that connects to this plate which grounds the radio the radio works fine but the ground is just not connected so why is the ground not connected it's because the alarm was turned on and you the way the thing works is you leave it on with the volume wherever you want it and then whenever the alarm gets around to wherever the alarm's supposed to go off somehow this connects that ground to this face plate and the way way I figured it out was I checked the wire connected I connected res checked resistance between the wire and the face plate and uh it was not connected but then as you turn the time around to the alarm you hear a little click and whenever you hear the click now you're connected the ground is connected to the face plate so that's just the way that they worked the alarm um this on the back says automatic turned one way and it says manual turned the other way so I guess that's supposed to um disconnect the alarm setup so that the the little switch is always connected to the plate or the little whatever that is is always connected to the plate so that it's just a manual radio but um it wasn't right okay so I've also put a battery in the in this part um and it has 1.6 volts present at the white wire and the redre wire between the white wire and the red wire but the little clock is not doing anything so I'm going to do a little research and see if I can figure out if there's anything I can do with that maybe it needs oil but I cannot get the I cannot get the balance to keep spinning look we're Mel we're merging the clock repair and the watch repair stuff I'm not gr at either one of them so it's got 1.6 volts on it right now and see how it just kind of it'll stop so I'm sure the way this thing works is with some kind of magnetism but it won't keep going it could be too since I'm sitting on the face that it is just stopping it because the hands are stopped but if I hold it up in the air it does the same thing um so I'm going to do see if I can do a little research on this bll of a movement and see if anybody's talking about how to get it going again usually on a clock movement now this one's a little different because it's you know it's electric but usually on a clock movement there's only three things that can go wrong one something's missing or broken it doesn't look like anything's missing or broken on here missing or broken um so uh two something is worn so bad that it just cannot run so um that would be something like the the teeth are worn down or something that's almost impossible that that's never really the problem but it could be the problem and then three there's dried up oil and the thing won't turn well because the oil is turned to glue so it you know it needs cleaned so it's probably it needs cleaned but I'm not too I'm not too sure I want to rip this thing apart there are a ton of gears in it too look at all that pretty complex the balance isn't broken though I mean it it does spin around and it seems like it's still balanced so the balance staff I don't think is broken and the hairspring looks fine um I think what happens is p voltage comes through these little coils to create some kind of magnetic something that kicks it around you know on a watch you usually have a main spring and the just the power from the main spring pushes the gears and uh you know gives enough inertia to the tuning fork that the balance keeps going back and forth as it hits the tuning fork which makes it all work but on this one I think the way they're doing it is they're they're sending voltage through these little coils to send it and then back and then back and then back it probably switches back and forth somehow or something um so it could be that these just all burn up it also could be that that is a resistor that red red red there and that it uh um the resistor screwed up or something so I'm going see if I can do a little little investigation on it and see if anybody in the world has ever fixed it and then typed online what they did to fix it okay so I have completely disassembled it the only thing I didn't do was take the speaker out but I unsoldered it so the lens I could have just popped off from the front but the whole thing needs to be clean so I'm going to try to clean it up as best as I can and start putting it all back together I tried to find anyone alive that had ever fixed a clock like that and then told people online how to do it and it's never happened in the history of society apparently I can't find anything about them if you type quartz clock repair you get all those little plastic crappy ones that are even worse than this right so that's not really that helpful to me although it is it's a similar design but it's you know this one 's a different Beast so I don't know about the clock we're still going to mess with it a little bit but I don't I can't see anything wrong with it but it's not working obviously um but I'm going to clean everything back and put it all back together clean it up piece by piece and then get it as good as I can and then uh get the board mounted back in it and then that clock can be the last thing to go in okay so this is me getting them back together I took the the battery packs that I had cleaned up and I put them them in the ultrasonic cleaner and it really did a good job on them it didn't get them new or anything but it got rid of most of the corrosion that was left you can see a little bit left there but most of it came off just fine I probably could have put it in another 10 minutes and it would have got rid of that um I didn't put any of the screws in but yeah uh and then I I I simplified this thing over here I to the yellow wire was going to here and then to here so I just ran it to there and then the white wire was going to a post there and then into the uh clock so I just ran it straight like it was coming out of the clock I just ran it straight to the battery and then the red wire was coming out of the battery to a post there and then over to here I just ran it straight to the battery uh all of this I got mounted back and you know I was talking about uh putting a jumper on the ground I'm not going to do that now that I know how the thing actually works so basically there was probably not much wrong with it um and we haven't fixed much all we've done is clean it up a little bit and clean up the battery compartment so I'm going to put the batteries back on it uh plug the antenna back in which is hanging here somewhere plug the antenna back in and um I've cleaned up the front and we'll see if the radio works and the clock is still the jury is still out on that if somebody can tell me how to troubleshoot that era of quartz clock that would be great hold the phone everybody stop what they're doing this is very important okay so this is the clock one radio battery 1.5 volt pin light okay that's not what this says it says clock battery 1.4v zm9 that's a different type of battery I think that's a longer lasting battery so a regular battery will work however can you see the problem a pinlight battery is made where there is a little bump on the positive side and the negative side goes on the little reel the little spool well that's how I mounted the battery up here but I mounted the battery backwards holy crap and I don't mean it's not the wires or anything look how it's I didn't move these that was in that same position but because it used a different battery it doesn't have the same construction you know a doublea battery looks like this there's a little bump that's the positive side and I'm just used to that so you put the negative side on the little coily part and you put the bump the other way so I didn't even check I wonder if I have I got the whole freaking thing backwards too I think I've got this all backwards too oh Lord look I've got the positive of this one now running to the ground I got to reverse these two wires anyway we're going to figure it out but on this one I didn't mount it like that I had the battery mounted in backwards so the clock may work it may be that I just had the battery in backwards hm okay let me reverse the wires on this one so the positive is here and the negative is down here and then um wait a minute is that right negative yeah so that's the negative and that's the positive I've got to reverse these two wires and then we'll make sure that the radio still works and then for the finale of the video I'll put the freaking battery in correctly and see if the clock will actually come back to us keep your fingers crossed all right folks I got a all put back together unfortunately the clock hasn't moved yet so I thought I was on to something there I wasn't on to nothing got it all back together looks good what you think that's a really nice looking little radio so let's try it out a little bit Canada where in canadaa all right we're on am. boy it's got plenty of volume you kind of got to turn it off and back on though sometimes I I don't know if it's overdriving it because it's too loud or what everybody let's see if we can get 650 670 The Score speaks like 4 five Jimmy Butler did not lost your entire arm on Social Security however we do still [Laughter] see and put in the work uh I don't I just don't get into that 888 80819 [Applause] [Applause] [Music] you could use an alignment I'm sure but it picks up all kinds of [Applause] [Laughter] stuff I that I'm afraid of the that must be 650 and M watch the [Music] volume I feel up the glasses make them all feel at [Music] home like it won't get very quiet and if you if you play with it enough you lose all the volume so there might be a problem with the pot I sprayed it with a contact cleaner but um if you turn it off off and then back on it comes back but you can't get it real quiet I Would S on a r normal radio that's like a [Music] three offer him more money since I would have for Republican I ain't this old but I mean I think if you go where you want to listen we're here for you Zuma radio the original Greatest [Applause] Hit zomer Radio to dictate that remember Russell and rather I'm i w Etc the others so that was 1110 our local channel there's some music up in this area somewhere said this that's at the top of the Channel I want to be the best talk easy so I I can't turn it way down it just it won't do it but it'll go way up so it's as if the volume goes instead of 0o to 10 it goes 3 to 10 let's try FM got oh that's the volume again see how I killed it just by turning the volume down now it won't come back let's turn it off back on TI on sale with all chcken mask for let the Last Shadow and I got it good do doctor give me the news i' got he restores my [Applause] family and is determined to live by it woman haveen coella chapter holding this country [Applause] together you fit in the W to the flight to the sky never down baby check my St TR [Music] for AFF life insurance come off the board so it works really good it's just it's a little bit too loud like me and the clock doesn't work but the clock is easily accessible from the back it's really easy to get to that so hopefully I can figure out how to fix that type of clock and fix the thing um now I will say that I tried had to find the schematics for it I couldn't find them um I saw one person said they had them on a site and they wanted $22 for them so I think I paid $5 for this clock this radio and they went $22 for the piece of paper with a couple drawings on it I ain't doing that I'm not paying $22 for that the the the I spent $5 on the radio and then the schematics would be 22 even if I fixed it where it was perfectly working I would not be uh I would not end up with a $27 radio and that's not counting shipping so we won't be doing that [Music] wanted where's my oldies no oldies tonight folks it show the light [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] light for me figures up ahead moving in the more you listen to your kids [Applause] [Applause] [Music] I like it a lot I like the look of it that's just a that's a cool little radio so I like that I'm glad I picked that up it's worth $5 okay folks so uh if you have any idea how to fix a clock like that or what I should check let me know uh if I'm using the wrong battery and it matters let me know that too because the battery I'm using is probably 1.6 1. 65 volts you know it's brand new battery and um that said one .4 I wonder if it matters might be that if you put one is too high it just doesn't do anything I don't know so leave your comments below let me know what you think and uh I guess I will see you on the next one now if you like these uh you know 60s model Cheapo radios a while back I fixed that Channel Master one right there that's right these props in the back they're not just uh they all have a little story to them huh you didn't you didn't realize that did you maybe so that channel m Master maybe we could go back in time to a time when the Channel Master didn't work and I tried to get it to work so check out this video we'll see you next week here on amateur repair time