Repairing cheap watches

[Gladers01]

Hoofy said:

£10?! Not sure about those prices for Timpsons in London. £25 for a lifetime battery offer. £100+ to fit a Breitling battery (they wanted to send it off).

The prices do vary from branch to branch, was quoted up to £24 for the lifetime battery offer but went for the low cost option as the Renata battery tends to last at least 3 years in the Rotary & Mondaine. Mine was fitted at the Beaconsfield branch, other more expensive branches are available in the Bucks area both are ticking away nicely and keeping good time.

[wibble cb]

My new timex expedition has no indigo ( seller refunded the whole purchase price and told me to bin it!). , I fitted a new battery, but it made no difference, in order to get the case back to re seal I actually put it on a rug and stood on it with my socked heel, it ‘popped’ back on, it seems there is no real way to fix the indigo.

[Hoofy]

Gladers01 said:

Hoofy said:

£10?! Not sure about those prices for Timpsons in London. £25 for a lifetime battery offer. £100+ to fit a Breitling battery (they wanted to send it off).

The prices do vary from branch to branch, was quoted up to £24 for the lifetime battery offer but went for the low cost option as the Renata battery tends to last at least 3 years in the Rotary & Mondaine. Mine was fitted at the Beaconsfield branch, other more expensive branches are available in the Bucks area both are ticking away nicely and keeping good time.

Thanks, will defo be getting quotes from other Timpsons!

[Gladers01]

Hoofy said:

Gladers01 said:

Hoofy said:

£10?! Not sure about those prices for Timpsons in London. £25 for a lifetime battery offer. £100+ to fit a Breitling battery (they wanted to send it off).

The prices do vary from branch to branch, was quoted up to £24 for the lifetime battery offer but went for the low cost option as the Renata battery tends to last at least 3 years in the Rotary & Mondaine. Mine was fitted at the Beaconsfield branch, other more expensive branches are available in the Bucks area both are ticking away nicely and keeping good time.

Thanks, will defo be getting quotes from other Timpsons!

The other more modern Rotary (only 20 years old) just needed a new battery. The 'watch smith' tested the old battery using an analogue voltmeter and was flat as a pancake, the needle barely moved so a new battery was fitted and all is well again

[Hoofy]

Gladers01 said:

Hoofy said:

Gladers01 said:

Hoofy said:

£10?! Not sure about those prices for Timpsons in London. £25 for a lifetime battery offer. £100+ to fit a Breitling battery (they wanted to send it off).

The prices do vary from branch to branch, was quoted up to £24 for the lifetime battery offer but went for the low cost option as the Renata battery tends to last at least 3 years in the Rotary & Mondaine. Mine was fitted at the Beaconsfield branch, other more expensive branches are available in the Bucks area both are ticking away nicely and keeping good time.

Thanks, will defo be getting quotes from other Timpsons!

The other more modern Rotary (only 20 years old) just needed a new battery. The 'watch smith' tested the old battery using an analogue voltmeter and was flat as a pancake, the needle barely moved so a new battery was fitted and all is well again

How much were you charged?

[Gladers01]

Hoofy said:

How much were you charged?

The case was resealed to the Rotary 'Dolphin Standard' which means it should be waterproof when swimming, diving, showering or yachting according to the blurb, cost was £19.95 and took all of 10 minutes

[craigthecoupe]

Error_404_Username_not_found said:

Your Tissot will simply be fitted with a new calibre, wherever you send it. With a cheap set of tools and a little patience this is easy to do yourself. And cheap.
Seiko UK are justly famous for customer service and will revive your 5 for you no problem.
I have a hobby of buying non-runner Seiko watches for buttons online and fiddling about with them. Usually I stick to Kinetics - they're easy.
Earlier this year I transplanted a 5M62 Kinetic calibre into a 5 which is now reliable and very accurate, but looks original.
Repairing and modifying Seikos is a very rewarding bit of fun and everything you can possibly need or want is easily available online.

You know you want to...

Would you care to point me in the direction of where i might start to glean such information? I've watched a few service videos of watches in the past, they are fascinating and hugely daunting in equal measure.

[tumble dryer]

craigthecoupe said:

Error_404_Username_not_found said:

Your Tissot will simply be fitted with a new calibre, wherever you send it. With a cheap set of tools and a little patience this is easy to do yourself. And cheap.
Seiko UK are justly famous for customer service and will revive your 5 for you no problem.
I have a hobby of buying non-runner Seiko watches for buttons online and fiddling about with them. Usually I stick to Kinetics - they're easy.
Earlier this year I transplanted a 5M62 Kinetic calibre into a 5 which is now reliable and very accurate, but looks original.
Repairing and modifying Seikos is a very rewarding bit of fun and everything you can possibly need or want is easily available online.

You know you want to...

Would you care to point me in the direction of where i might start to glean such information? I've watched a few service videos of watches in the past, they are fascinating and hugely daunting in equal measure.

This guy gives a great understanding of what's actually going on inside the marvel on your wrist. So easy to understand when explained well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-03G-Bmj00

[Error_404_Username_not_found]

craigthecoupe said:

Would you care to point me in the direction of where i might start to glean such information? I've watched a few service videos of watches in the past, they are fascinating and hugely daunting in equal measure.

95% of the little I know about fettling watches came from YouTube, so you have probably been there before me. The very basic watch toolkit I have was about fifteen quid new from the evilbay.
Sorry, Craig - probably not a very informative answer.
The only real trick is patience TBH. I'm in the middle of rebuilding a Casio Sea Pathfinder because new batteries didn't sort it and the mode change button was jammed in. It took a while to twig the problem.
I spotted that the battery contact springs had been bent and the jammed button had depleted the batteries (it has four) in no time.
Just waiting now for the new batteries as they are not a very common type. (SR927W).

I'll let you know who wins.

Usually simpler with Seiko Kinetics because the problem is almost always a dead capacitor and degraded insulators. Thats okay though, because they come together in the kit. Otherwise they are astonishingly reliable and extremely accurate devices. The only hard part was making a tool for the rotor centre screw which has a stupidly fine slot. I ground one from a Stanley knife blade.

My takeaway is to only take on what looks do-able. I've only ever managed to fix one self-winding automatic for example, and that was only by blind luck.

Edit: crossed in the post with Tumble drier. Nice video, I hadn't seen it before.

Edited by Error_404_Username_not_found on Friday 13th December 21:22

[tumble dryer]

Error_404_Username_not_found said:

craigthecoupe said:

Would you care to point me in the direction of where i might start to glean such information? I've watched a few service videos of watches in the past, they are fascinating and hugely daunting in equal measure.

95% of the little I know about fettling watches came from YouTube, so you have probably been there before me. The very basic watch toolkit I have was about fifteen quid new from the evilbay.
Sorry, Craig - probably not a very informative answer.
The only real trick is patience TBH. I'm in the middle of rebuilding a Casio Sea Pathfinder because new batteries didn't sort it and the mode change button was jammed in. It took a while to twig the problem.
I spotted that the battery contact springs had been bent and the jammed button had depleted the batteries (it has four) in no time.
Just waiting now for the new batteries as they are not a very common type. (SR927W).

I'll let you know who wins.

Usually simpler with Seiko Kinetics because the problem is almost always a dead capacitor and degraded insulators. Thats okay though, because they come together in the kit. Otherwise they are astonishingly reliable and extremely accurate devices. The only hard part was making a tool for the rotor centre screw which has a stupidly fine slot. I ground one from a Stanley knife blade.

My takeaway is to only take on what looks do-able. I've only ever managed to fix one self-winding automatic for example, and that was only by blind luck.

Edit: crossed in the post with Tumble drier. Nice video, I hadn't seen it before.

Edited by Error_404_Username_not_found on Friday 13th December 21:22

Thanks.

I really like his approach; honest, helpful and goes into great (but informatively enjoyable) detail in explaining the different aspects of what actually goes on in making a watch work - he does a video on how to recognise, in a jumbled up lot, where each screw goes, and how to recognise the difference. (There's a st-loadt] of different type of screws in a watch!).

The right to repair?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcEA-iUjmjY

[craigthecoupe]

Thanks very much for that info, i'll take a look over the weekend. I've always fancied having a tinker, but once the back is off, it's pretty daunting!

[Dynam0humm]

NiceCupOfTea said:

As with so much these days, the price of labour means that cheap watches probably get chucked rather than fixed. However, I have a couple of cheap watches that are of rather sentimental value that I’d like to get looked at, even if replacement would be cheaper.

One is a quartz Tissot PRC200 chrono that my dad gave me - I haven’t used it for about 15 years, from memory the battery didn’t seem to last long but I don’t know if it was due to poor/cheap fitting.

The other is a Seiko 5 which was my first automatic watch. It suddenly started losing time about 10 years ago and I stopped trusting it. I spoke to a watch repairer who told me he suspected he knew what the problem but it was impossible to pin him down to repair it so I gave up in the end.

Are the likes of fixmywatch.co.uk any good for watches like this?

If the Tissot hasn't been opened in over 15 years there's a good chance the battery has leaked and destroyed the movement. I'm not familiar with that particular model but it'll have an ETA movement of some sort and will cost from £90 to £120 if available. I say if available as Tissot sometimes use a variation of a standard ETA movement which is exclusive to Tissot so the only people who have access are Tissot. If it's a standard movement then any decent watchmaker will be able to source and fit one for a lot less that Tissot would charge.

The Seiko will likely have a 7S26 movement which has since been replaced by the 4R36/NH36. The newer one is almost identical but with hacking and hand winding so it's a common upgrade, especially when it works out cheaper than servicing the old movement. The stems are different though and some Seiko's have a one piece crown and stem, so you may need to buy a new crown as well.

Error_404_Username_not_found said:

Your Tissot will simply be fitted with a new calibre, wherever you send it. With a cheap set of tools and a little patience this is easy to do yourself. And cheap.

Have you ever replaced a quartz chronograph movement? It's easy in theory, but getting all the hands perfectly aligned most certainly isn't. It's easier on a mechanical chrono where you can hold the reset button to stop the pinions from moving, then you can align the hands before pressing them down, but there's no way to stop them moving on a quartz so it often takes multiple attempts to get it right, which means multiple chances to damage the dial or hands.

[bazza.]

Trust me being a watchmaker I know what can happen from trying to swap out a chrono quartz movement yourself as
It isn't straight forward as you would think without the proper know how and tools.

Its very easy to mark the dial or bend the hands or even damage the new movement when fitting it
Some time the hands can de rivet themselves and so on.

[Silvanus]

Ryyy said:

Oceanrower said:

Perhaps, instead of servicing, you should just post the watch to yourself…

...through evri

He does want it to arrive back with him.