I recently saw this nice site put together by Paul on fixing the clock in
his early vanagon:

http://www.pauldottrip.com/84vanagon/analogclock/analogclock.html

I have an '86, and have always been annoyed by the big broken clock in my
dash.  At one point I was going to swap for the dash with the tach, but
later decided to add a small external tach.

I expected that the guts of the analog clock in my '86 would be the same as
the one in Paul's early vanagon.  It is slightly different, having only one
of the capacitors that Paul replaced.  Otherwise, Paul's instructions are
excellent.  The one part that I had a little trouble with was actually
pulling the whole clock out of the "pod."  The key to this is that you have
to carefully take out the temp and fuel gauges at the same time that you
pull the clock mechanism out.  I replaced the one capacitor with one from
Radio Shack.  Hooked the clock up to 12v dc supply, and it started right up
and kept excellent time for a day or so of testing.

I put the whole thing back in the van, and then the clock did not work.  I
was sad.  took it all back out and found that the conductor for the clock
power in the plastic film was broken very near the connector.  I carefully
soldered a small jumper across the break.  I noted that several of the
other contact strips at the connector were also in bad shape.  I tried to
glue them back down to the plastic with no success.  Once again I installed
the pod back in the van and now my clock worked!  Unfortunately, now my
dash lights did not work.  I was sad again.  I carefully took things apart
enough that I could examine the connector.  several of the strips were
lifted up and folded over.  I tried to put them back in place as best I
could and carefully slid the connector on.  Everything seems to be working
now, but I feel like that connection is pretty weak and will not tolerate
many more cycles of being taken apart and reconnected.  I anticipate
replacing that connector in the future at some point.

Thanks to Paul for putting that instructional site up to help many of us
with broken clocks.

Edward