Sigh - oh well, I choose to think of it as leading to good father/son bonding time...
As penance, I made him work with me to attempt to put it back together again. We spent an hour or so tinkering with putting the parts in various places, and finally got it figured out.
- Arrange the parts according to the following picture. The gears essentially are arranged left to right in descending size order. Pay special attention to the more granular, larger looking teeth on the far right gear.
- Starting from the right, position the gears in their corresponding holes. The gears will layer one on top of the other, and the teeth from the left gear will drive the middle sprocket on the gear to the right.
- Once the white plastic pieces are arranged as shown, position the wire spring over the middle post. Note the position of the two hooks, ensure they correspond with the second photograph.
- Properly tensioning the middle knob is the trickiest part. After inserting it onto the middle post, ensuring that the spring hook end is in the proper position, turn it clockwise in order to put tension in the spring. As you turn the knob you will come to a place, before you have turned it 365 degrees, where you will need to lift the knob slightly and continue turning. You need to turn one full turn to properly tension the spring.
- With the Start/Stop switch in the Start position, put the top on the timer. Holding the two halves together, test the timer for proper operation. The timer should take about 3 minutes to rotate fully around. If it works properly, insert and tighten the two screws. If not, you may have to futz around with the exact positioning in order to get things fully operational.
Our timer works perfectly with the above procedure, and I hope yours does as well.
Thanks for this Christmas miracle! Needed help and you came through...thanks for the brainpower.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the detailed description. Works great. I know that there are lots of people out there like us who love to take things apart just to see how they work. But, we can't always figure out how they go back together. My son took this one apart without my help, so I had no clue where it all started. Your pictures said it all. Kudos.
ReplyDeleteAnd Thank you from us as well :)
ReplyDeleteGreat Pictures!! help out a lot.. now I don't need to buy a new one!
ReplyDeleteI took mine apart several years ago and gave up on trying to fix it! This is awesome! Thank you!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you. Ours just stopped intermittently so I took it apart and was able to re-tension the spring and put it all back together in just 2 minutes with your instructions. The game just wasn't the same without it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting the "Christmas Rush" this year! I'm glad we were able to help everyone out...
ReplyDeleteThanks for this posting....I had my husband take off the back thinking the thing needed batteries. Nope I was wrong. The whole spring thing popped out when he took off the back. We couldn't of put it back together without your post. Thanks. Other sites said to buy a new one...but not you:) Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if ours are different era models -- my spring has no hooks. Your instructions are great, thank you, but I've still had trouble figuring out the exact positioning of the spring ends and how to make it all work properly (it's almost right, but not quite) :/
ReplyDeleteGreat instructions/pictures....we still play this game even though it's a "first gen" version (1988).
ReplyDeleteThanks! Another saved family game!
ReplyDeleteExcellent instructions and very helpful pictures. I just fixed mine! Thanks so much for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMines a little different but your pictures enabled me to figure it out. Thanks:
ReplyDeleteStill usefull even in 2020. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAwesome instructions!! The pictures was a great help. Thx!
ReplyDeleteAnother Christmas miracle! My daughter thought the batteries were dead and disassembled it and it exploded. Couldn't have put it back together without this post!
ReplyDeleteAwesome, glad it helped!
DeleteBy the way, everyone, 12 years later my son who took apart my Scattergories timer, which produced the article and pictures above, wound up being a mechanical engineer for SpaceX! Obviously this means that all the kids (and adults!) who take apart the timer are brilliant, or will one day be so! ;-)
ReplyDeleteThis is brilliant! Congratulations!
DeleteI had exactly zero faith that my search of "Scattergories timer assembly" would yield more than 0 results, but here we are! Thank you so much for this tutorial. I disassembled mine because it makes an awful noise when you use it that is terribly distracting. Unfortunately, the noise is completely mechanical and unavoidable. Nonetheless, it is nice to have the timer reassembled rather than in a pile of pieces in a plastic bag.
ReplyDeleteThank you for saving me hours of time with this post!!
ReplyDelete