Richard Preiss sat Tuesday in the workroom at Eternal Timepieces, his Mesa clock repair shop, gently holding in one rock-steady hand a small pair of tweezers that grasped an even smaller brass gear.

If you're old enough to remember the '60s and '70s, you have some memory of car clocks that actually worked. Seems they worked when these vintage cars were new, but as the years passed, the ticking ...