It's the analog clocks that usually fail by the two large capacitors.
There's no typical failure mode for the digital ones other than the LCDs
turning black, you would have to have electronics tech inclinations (and
test gear) to even try to find a problem.

That little u is the Greek lowercase letter mu, and means "micro" in the
places where you usually see it.  So uF is microfarads.  The farad is such
a large unit of capacitance that until fairly recently nobody had even
built a capacitor that large.  Now you can get them from Panasonic and
others for a few bucks.

When I was young we talked about mikes and mickey-mikes (uF and uuF).  Then
they changed uuF to pF, and much more recently people want to talk about
fractional nF instead, which is confusing to us old codgers.

Yrs,
d

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 11:31 PM, thewestyman <zolo@foxinternet.net> wrote:

> Hi to all,
>
> 2.1 ‘86 van.
> My clock is not going.
> Took it out, applied direct 12 Volts, nothing.
> I thought, to change the capacitors.  Did it once and worked.
> Took it out of it’s case.  Can’t find the capacitors discolored.
> Honestly, I don’t know how to test the capacitors.
> I have a Harbor Freight $20 tester with an F side on it going from 2n to
> 20nano (that little u with it’s left side leg)
>
> Maybe one of you know more than I.
> Anyone?
>
> Zoltan
>