Water-logged Seiko Diver 6105-8110

The below post was posted on the Seiko-Citizen website on the 19th Aug 2010.

http://www.thewatchsite.com/index.php/topic,7678.0.html



This 6105-8110 came my way... apparently stopped working about a week ago...???!!!





Lets take a closer look,




the rear end...6105-8110 from 1974..don't you love a neat rear end? I also like the fact the owner engraved the case and not the easily swapped out caseback..if you're going to stump the theives.. do it properly.




but engraving the sides of the case as well is just overkill..............the writing may be Arabic but the words could be Jawi, using Arabic characters to form Malay words.





The famous LOCK crown.........




which does not lock anymore..the pin has been worn away.




Caseback was tight but came off with a bit of persuasion..didn't look too bad at first.











Stem came off without drama and the movement popped right out..







Dial came off nicely too, dial feet were OK which is a surprise.




For those of you who have never seen the backside of a 6105 dial............3 N..? knowing what we know of Seikos dating system I would like to hazard a guess…November 1973? This ties in with the case back date of Feb 1974.







The inside of the crystal.........





Inside the caseback...serviced in 2000? Skimped on the gaskets did we?




Hands...





This is the back of the hands, not the previous photo... can't blame you if you were wondering.





Pic with the autowind rotor removed.. the blackish stuff is probably oil mixed with water, too much oil to begin with.





Under the dial





With the main bridge removed..look at the click spring.....that's water.





Going train visible.. hack lever.






Setting works





The bare main plate.







Findings..

The going train was shot ...the pallet-fork, escape wheel and balance all had broken pivots. The other wheels were not too good either. Hairspring was toast as well…rust. This is not much of a problem as I had some parts (used).
What killed the project was the setting lever, the date-setting gear had cracked, probably due to rust, and as a result the watch wouldn't set. I didn't have this particular part and while I could have removed the gear assy from the lever of another movement and re-staked it to this one, it was not a repair I would have been comfortable with. I would have tried it if it had been my watch though.





Conclusion
The watch was returned to the customer. I told him one option would be a heart-transplant, replacing the bad movement with a 6309 but this would require the crown to come off the stem without breaking so I could reuse it, he will think about it.


And no...he will most likely not sell the watch as it was his fathers....


Hope you enjoyed the pics.


Anil

Tudor 7966 Service (ETA2462)

Just got this Tudor in for a servicing..

Prince Oysterdate Model 7966 from early 1962, with ETA2462 based calibre marked Tudor Geneve under the dial.Serial number 368xxxx.

This watch would only tick for several seconds and then stop. Hopefully a clean will rectify this.

On opening the watch, I found that it was incredibly filthy, someone had previously oiled the watch liberally and it had dried into 'gunk'. I didn't even take a photo of the dirty assembled movement as I immediately stripped it down.

Another surprise was the incredible number of jewels on this watch. It looks like the autowind mechanism had been replaced with one from one of those 77 jewels Titoni. I actually have one which is why I recognised it immediately. The 77Jewel Titoni has the ETA2452 movement which is essentially the same. No actual harm but a purist might be offended.


Some pics of how the mainplate looked on the dialside. The brown stuff on the edges is from the rubber cement used to hold the dial in place as the dialfeet had broken off...doh!!

On the top side,

Dialside after cleaning, in case you thought this was an ETA?...marked Tudor Geneve 2462.

The peerlage (circular graining) is one step above the normal ETA stuff.

Mainplate with barrel and third wheel installed

Mainplate with train bridge installed to check the smoothness of the barrel and third wheel meshing as the third wheel pinion had some rust issues. It checked out OK eventually.

With wheel-train in place.

With going train installed, check out the jewels....!

Another view of the movement with the train installed.

Balance and cock....hairspring looks good.

Balance assembly installed, ticks nicely.

I managed to source a new date-ring, here it is side-by-side with the old one.

Close up of the old date-ring.

Dialside with keyless works installed.

Datewheel and date mechanism installed.

The autowinding mechanism was also very dirty...since these wheels are quite slo-moving, most people use heavy oil here but this can gum the ratchets in the reversing wheels.

The autowind plate before cleaning.

The intermediate gear was quite dirty as you can see.

The wheels looked a bit better with some cleaning...

The autowind was also cleaned up...there are a lot of scratches in the photo but these are are not really so bad with the naked eye.

The dial and hands installed. The dial has 'patina' giving it a yellowish tint, since this is spread out quite evenly I did not want to try to clean this up...it is more likely I would make it worse...!

Movement installed in the case.

Then the auto-winding stuff goes on.

Inner caseback...Tudor uses the same system as Rolex, here it says 162, meaning 1st quarter 1962.

Ticking quite nicely now. The discoloration around the edges is from the glue used previously to secure the crystal. I noticed the outer-bezel was cracked so I decided not to remove it as it would most likely break... It is most likely already broken as the crystal is non-stadard, what happens is the crystal would be too thick and when you force the bezel on the bezel will break.

Problems....

1. This calibre does not have the usual cannon post arrangement like most watches which slip to enable time-changing..
The hour post is a snap fit on the hour wheel which does not have a post..it is just a flat wheel with three prongs which grip the hour post. This enables the hour post to be moved independantly of the hour wheel when changing the time.

2. The hands were in bad shape and needed to be staked. The finish of the hands was also quite rough but the owner didn't want it changed.

3. The crown does not 'spring' out when unscrewed. So when hand-winding, it is necessary to apply a bit of outwards pressure, even so it is quite easy for the crown to want to screw back in...I couldn't find a correct original replacement..Luckily it is an automatic...this would not be acceptable on a hand-wind.

4. The dialside shock-protection spring was quite mangled.. I forgot to take a close-up of this but you can see it in some of the pictures above. It is a four-leafed clover design which looks like it is one of thoseturn and fit devices but it is actually hinged like the normal Incabloc.. Luckily it still managed to perform its function, if it didn't things would have got a lot worse.

5. Broken dial feet.

Overall a nice, if neglected watch. If it were mine I would look for the non-jewelled auto-wind parts as the jewels detract from the beauty of the basic movement. A new crown and possibly a new crystal and hands would finish things nicely.