Intermatic WH Timer Problem

I know this is electrical, but it goes with a water heater, so I hope to find some help here.

I cannot get a standard, "yellow dial in a gray box" water heater timer to keep time. The manual switch works fine, so there's no problem with the wiring. And for about a week, the clock triggered the on/off cycles perfectly. Then we lost power so I had to reset the clock. The darn thing won't move off the time I set. I don't think the internal clock motor got fried.

I pull out the clock dial, set the time under the pointer, and make sure it clicks back in position. The manual lever is set to off during this. The on/off triggers are clamped into position. I walk away, and the the clock hasn't moved 12 hours later. Like I said, it worked once. It's brand new.

This is the second Intermatic gray box timer I've bought in two months. I NEVER got the first one to keep time. The second one worked only for that one week. Am I missing something?

thanks
Doug

I have the electronic type WH timer and have not had any problems. The clock and electronics run off the battery, so no problems with power outages. Here is what it looks like...
http://www.rewci.com/inehwaheti24.html

Intermatic timers are made with either a 115 volt motor or a 230 volt motor. You need to make sure which you have, and that it is wired approriately.

Those mechanical Intermatics are darn dependable devices. Its hard to believe that you bought two defective ones. Maybe you have it wired wrong?

At first, I figured I HAD wired it wrong and somehow bypassed the feed to the clock itself, but the two clock leads are hooked up correctly. I double checked the diagram. Evidence of this is that the timer DID work for a week, until I re-set the time for a power outage.

After I asked for help here last night, I reset the time again to the correct hour, but this morning, the yellow dial was where I left it last night. Again, I could flip the manual switch and all was ok.

A tough problem, thanks for the help. I agree, these gray box timers should be bulletproof.

It may be that you have a screw loose (in the timer). Or something that is associated with the drive or the dial. I would look for mechanical things that link the motor to the mechanism.

If you can find a way to check if the motor shaft is rotating, that would tell you if there is an internal electrical problem or a drive-train problem.

Have you checked the voltage at the clock terminals? If you have a 120 V clock, the neutral wire may have problems before it gets to the timer.

timer

Water heaters do not have neutral wires. The timer motor is 240v to operate off the water heater wiring. if he has juryrigged a 120v timer to operate the water heater, that could cause many problems.