Has anyone got any experience with this? I've been driving my son's 81 with the big tach and small clock, and the clock can hardly be read after dark, as the lighting is so dim. I replaced the bulb to no effect, and checked voltage at the connector (12.6V, a bit lower than battery, but not significant).

So, borrowing from instrument suggestions on the MGB board, I hope to pull the casing off the clock guts, and paint the interior of it with high-reflectance white paint. Has anyone disembowelled the little clock? (and got it back working again?) Thanks, all.
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Bob (81-244GL B21F, 83-244DL B23F, 94-944 B230FD plus grocery-getter Dodge minivan, MGB, and numerous old motorcycles)

thanks for the clock repair info. :-}

Are you sure you used the correct bulb. I am pretty sure the clock uses a higher wattage bulb than the other acessory guages. If the dealer did not look it up they might have given you a bulb for an oil pressure guage. It sticks in my head that the clock has a 1.4 watt and the other guages/warning lights mostly use a 1.2 watt bulbs. I'm going from memory so I not 100% sure, but any dealer should be able to look it up for you (even though most Volvo dealers would like to forget that rear drive Volvos ever existed).

I have the same recollection except that the size is 2.0W for the brighter unit. So I decided to search -- I remember Osram made them. The 1.2W is marked 2721. I believe the 2.0W is a 2722. And today on Osram's site I see a 2723 rated for 2.3W. I suppose all that doesn't help unless you know where to find them, but I keep seeing Audi and BMW come up in searches. There's this one site donsbulbs.com offering a lot of cross refs, but the prices I saw look pretty scary. Another automotive supplier was looking for sixty some cents for every 1.2W lamp you put in your cart...almost worth getting new instead of those junkyard bulbs that sometimes don't survive the installation. Yes, I swear I've seen "2.0" on a few of those.
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Art Benstein near Baltimore

Bob, I can't see my clock either. Nor can I read the odometer, unless I put the reading specs on. But I've heard the complaint before, so maybe these gauges are pretty dim.

I dug up some pics from one of the capacitor change jobs that should show you one way of dealing with the clock's case. If you can light it better I want to know how you do it.

Used a compass to draw a line...

Those are mighty fine pictures but that's really the hard way to do it. If you use a sharp knife, you can begin to uncrimp the black ring around the face of the clock. Put a little cut in it with a knife or dremel but only on the back side, not on the face. The ring will peel right off and the guts all come out the front. When you're all done, the ring can be crimped back into place with some blows with a flat bladed screwdriver. The plastic bezel hides any stray marks you might have made on the black ring and no aluminum tape is neccesary.
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Bob W.
16 Volvos ('58-'91)
445-544-122-240-740
Four turbos

I've tried that, although not on the clock-- it was a plastic cased turbo gauge-- and you are right, you can hide the damage with the bezel, but it would not make "mighty fine pictures" and my re-crimping effort might be described in writing more as a forceful rolling using the end of a large nutdriver than blows with a flat bladed screwdriver. I can't say either method was hard to do, but you can tell from those pics I can be pretty fussy.
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Art Benstein near Baltimore

I tried to start prying off the bezel without any luck. Had to drill a tiny hold in the back of the bezel to be able to start prying it off. Just be carefull you don't drill to far and go through the front. Did this to replace 2 bad caps. Clock works fine now.

The (small) clock on my 84 GL quit working long time ago. How difficult is it to get at the clock to remove it from the dash? Where can I find a new replacement clock? Expensive? What components usually go bad? Any diagnostic tips? Thanks for any help.

hi there i cut a notch with a dremel tool where it could not be seen bezel covers the notch, then peeled it around with little screwdriver i needed the glass. and i have 3 broken clocks. and i dont know how to fix them.