005 - Seiko 5 - 7S26-03D0

 #005 Seiko 5 7S26-03D0 - Cal 7S26

Movement            : 7S36 (not 7S26!)

Year                      : 2007?

Condition              : Dial  1/10

                              : Case  8/10

                              : Movement 7/10 

Bracelet                 : Non-original

Crown                    : Original crown.

Crystal                   : Replacement generic

Serial no.               : Case - 775897

Up today is a Seiko 5 which I picked up recently in a lot of damaged watches. As you can see from the 1st picture, this watch has been neglected and my initial guess is the crystal broke and the bits were removed and the watch was left in a box with other stuff which further damaged the dial and hands. Apart from the missing crystal, the day/date frame and numerous hour markers are also absent. The dial surface also has had some contamination which has left some permanent marks on the dial. The brown stuff on the minute hand is some brown paper which has stuck to the aforementioned contamination.

When I first saw the watch, a key factor in deciding to buy it was the movement visible from thru the display back showed no water damage which would be a major issue. In this case the movement looked OK. I'm not really a fan of the 7xxx movements from Seiko but condition wise it doesn't look too bad from the picture below.

One area that typical wears on these watches is the rotor bearing. On this example the rotor bearing, which comes off with the rotor is OK but the rotor was loose in the case and not attached to the movement. This is common enough as I see a lot off these watches where the rotor has come unscrewed and all it it takes is to remove the caseback and reattach it. 

However I noticed that there is some distortion to the bridge around the rotor post. Sadly this is something that can occur on these 7xxx movement where too much downwards force can dislodge the post from the bridge as it is only friction fitted. In this case I tried to re-attach the post but the fit was too loose so another bridge was used (I have several 'organ donors'). Initially I thought the broken crystal was the cause of the watch being put away but looking at the damage it could have been the damaged rotor post which resulted in the watch being put away and maybe given to a kid to play with resulting in more damage!

The dial side is generally quite clean.

Here is a picture of the day/date quickset I always get confused with the two white plastic star wheels which perform the quickset function. The one closer to the middle is fitted to a post so you could potentially fit it upside down.
  

Seiko have to be credited for adopting display backs and their design department should be commended for riding the mechanical watch resurgence in the early 2000s. This is one area where they left a lot of other manufacturers standing at the gate. Here we can see the model reference, 7S26-03D0, where 7S26 is the movement reference and 03D0 is the case reference. These numbers will be required when ordering parts. In this watch, while it states 7S26 on the caseback, the main bridge I removed has cap jewels for the third and escape wheels, which is found on the 7S36 movement. Was this main bridge damaged on another watch and someone swapped out the part from a watch with a damaged crystal? We will probably never know.

All Seikos will have a case serial number. This will aid in dating the watch as the first digit is the 7 to the nearest decade, in this case 2007, and the second digit will denote the month, here it is July. It is a bit hard to read with the naked eye compared to the all steel models.

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After a clean and service the movement was working fine. This dial was missing a foot, some dial markers and the date window. Nonetheless I decided to reuse this for the time being. I removed the remaining markers and found some other Seiko hands. A new generic crystal was fitted and this is the result. I've been wearing it a while and I kind of like it as it has a 'milgauss' look to it.

Meanwhile I found several dial and hands online and purchased some which I figured will look good. I opted for a sterile dial.

Still need to find a better strap as blue and brown do not really match but that is not a priority right now.

Thanks for reading!