One day the clock in my squareback quit working. I'd been given a spare when I bought the car, and obtained another from a car I parted out. Neither of these worked, either. One of the spares had a metal cover on the back, held on with two small slot head screws. The manufacture date on the clock was 7/71. I took off the cover and found a small assortment of plastic gears, a rotational oscillator (driven electromagnetically), and a transitor, capacitor & 3 resistors. Not terribly complicated, but... let's have a look at the other one. It had a plastic rear cover, but an earlier date stamped on it. (It's installed in my car right now; my other example of this type is dated 3/71.) The cover is held on by three nuts, one of which is covered by what appears to be a plastic anti-tamper seal. (Pliers took care of that...) Removing the cover revealed a bunch of neat-looking metal gears... it was nothing more than a mechanical wind-up clock with an electric winder! When it winds down every couple of minutes, a contact closes (part of the winding down action) and a solenoid is energized. The solenoid flies forward, instantly winding up the clock for the next few minutes. You hear it go "clunk" periodically if you sit in the car with the engine off. It turns out that there's a small internal fuse built into the clock; mine had blown. (Somebody on r.a.vw pointed this out to me. It was years ago, and I've forgotten who it was!) It appeared as though the fuse was simply a very thin wire. I soldered a new wire in its place, and it worked great! I should have lubricated it when I had it apart, though. It runs slow here in the winter (average January temperature is below freezing), just about right in spring and fall, and a little fast in the summer if I don't pop it out and adjust the speed for the season. I just think of it as a combination thermometer/chronometer. :-) -Greg gregm@vwtype3.org