DIY: Dash clock repair
 

I had a chance to take a look at the clock on 2013 Lexus ES 350.

When trying to adjust the clock, clock hands weren't moving. I could hear some grinding / rattle noise, and if given some "love tap" clock was working for couple seconds just to stop moving again.

I decided to take it apart and see what's wrong.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.clu...dc59e4bdac.jpg

Mechanical side is basically made of couple gears and brush-less motor. That thing with 6 pins and bunch of coils that I de-soldered from the board is the motor's stator. That black smooth ring below it is the rotor, and that white plastic pin and gear in bottom right is what sits inside the rotor and is supposed to spin the minute hand.

The problem is that that plastic pin is for some reason disconnected from the rotor, so rotor is free to rotate and clock hands don't move at all. I don't know what is supposed to hold those things together but making them like that doesn't make any sense.

I glued them together:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.clu...ff90543464.jpg

Put everything back and clock was working fine for 5 days now.

If you decide to do it, you don't need to take whole clock apart like I did. Take it out of the dash (watch youtube how to remove radio for the reference, but you only need to take off the horizontal wood trim, and trim piece with HVAC vents, don't need to take the gauge cluster trim or start button out). Take the clock apart (separate white housing from black). On the back of the clock you will see this motor and couple of the gears under transparent cover. Take that cover off and it should be possible to take the rotor and that small white gear-shaft thing out.

I had my dash clock go out at a low mileage, fortunately a warranty repair, but it didn't give me a good feeling.

I have a different clock issue on my 2013 ES300h - my clock runs about 40 minutes fast per day. No weird noises or jerky motions or anything but in a 24 hour period it advances 24 hours and 40 minutes. Any idea what could be causing this and how to fix it? Naturally there are no other screens with a clock function anywhere in the car. Of course it doesn't affect the running of the car - just annoying..

Fwiw, this started a few years ago and I was already way out of warranty so no free repair. I'm now at 160k and plan to drive the car as long as possible so an easy fix would be a great thing if possible.

I doubt there's anything a DIY'er could do to repair it since it's a quartz movement. They just sort of work or don't work in terms of accuracy, you can't adjust something like that as far as I know.

Maybe just set the close to like 12:00 and disconnect it, I agree its an annoyance to have a clock constantly be wrong. Lexus clearly had a poor supplier for their clock.