Thought someone might find this useful.
The dash clock in my GQ was totally dead. The plug in the back had the correct voltages on them, so the next most common suspect was 'dry joints' on the circuit board. Re-touching all the solder connections with my iron and a tiny bit more solder fixed everything and took about 5 minutes.
What happened was:
metal expands and contracts with temperature. car is 14 years old, so each solder joint has been flexed over 5000 times by the daily heat and cool down cycle, and metal fractures if you do this enough.
the result looks something like this:
happy hunting