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Introduction |
| My 12 year old battery-driven automatic Grayson G239 flip calendar clock often has the wrong date, even with new batteries. For example it shows 31 days in months with only 30 days and doesn't recognise leap years even though it is suppose to. Thus the errors get greater unless its manually corrected 5 times a year! (for the five short months) | | | This guide shows how simple maintenance can cure this problem which I could not find on the internet (as of 2022). | | | The flip calendar (day, date and month) is primarily driven mechanically by the battery-driven clock every day. But at the end of a 30-day month an electric motor, driven by the same battery in the clock, moves the date through 2 days instead of 1 day. This happens due to rotating contacts aligning on a printed circuit board (pcb) adjacent to the 'months' wheel. | | | Similarly at the end of February it moves on 4 days or 3 days if it is a leap year. So there is a similar pcb with contacts adjacent to the 'leap year' wheel. | | | After about 10 years of use, dirt can accumulate between the electrical contacts and the copper tracks on both the pcb's such that no electric current can pass to drive the motor. The dirt can be simply cleaned off with 'switch contact cleaner' without having to dismantle anything. (Note: a weak battery can also show this fault ie there is enough power left in the battery to drive the clock but not enough to drive the motor as well) | | | If you don't have any contact cleaner you could try dismantling the units and manually cleaning the contacts and adding a little lubricant, but that sounds like hard work. |
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