Hi all - I’ve been noticing that the minute and hour totalizer subdial hands advance faster than expect. For example, in the picture below the seconds hand is at 48 seconds but the minute hand has already advanced to the next minute - so is 12 seconds fast. In the picture below, the minutes subdial hand is pointing to 54 minutes but the hour subdial hand has already advanced to 1 hour - so it’s 6 minutes fast. Is this normal?
The problem highlighted in your first picture is no problem at all — the Speedmaster doesn’t hack, so it is difficult to get the minute hand zeroed at exactly the same time the small seconds crosses zero (60). In your case, it is either 12 seconds fast or 48 seconds slow. Some recommend applying back pressure to quasi-hack the watch, but I never bother. In your case, you were likely slightly off when setting it. With the normal rate of time drift it became more noticeable over time. Don’t worry about it — frankly, I find the small subseconds dial a worthless feature on these watches and ignore it. The second picture issue may be more of an issue and hint at the need for a service. I’m sure others more knowledgeable will speak up. On my 3-year old FOIS, the hour hand advances about 2 minutes early and always has. Yours isn’t far off from that, so it may be in spec. How old is the watch?
Right I forgot about the non-hacking! The watch is only about 1.5 years old so it’s still under warranty. I’m thinking of sending it in for warranty service.
Before you do that, fully wind the watch, reset the chronograph, start the chronograph and lay the watch dial up on a surface, and don't touch it. Stop it when the hour recorder gets to 1 hour and let us know what happens.
Hmm it does seem like the culprit is a misaligned hour totalizer subdial hand. Below are photos of the chrono started after a few seconds (hour subdial hand is a smidge to the right), then after 55 minutes when the hour subdial hand reaches 1 hour early, and finally after 60 minutes and you can see the hour hand a smidge to the right of the 1. Thoughts?
If you look at the hour recorder hand when the chronograph is rest, does it look to be lined up? I know it can be hard to tell with the chronograph seconds recording hand in place. When you start the chronograph from a reset position, does the hour recorder hand jump forward? Cheers, Al
My Speedy is about 9 months old and it has always done this exact thing- hour subdial hand advances almost to the next hour once the the chrono goes past the first 30 minutes. Even if this is out of spec I can’t imagine bothering to open it for this. The overall timekeeping of the watch has been steady and almost exactingly consistent. Basically this doesn’t really bother me, though I’m curious to hear from the experts whether it’s out of spec/a problem or sign of a need for a service.
It looks like at rest the hour recorder is shifted to the right a bit and when the chronograph starts the hour recorder does not jump.
Yeah I hear ya but the hour recorder misalignment does bother me a bit. I wonder if OSC can push the hour recorder to the left for me a bit.
Just looked and mine is ever so slightly a smidge to the right- definitely not as much as in your photo, but it’s not spot on. It also does not jump when the chrono starts.
Your hour counter is almost at 1 hour after only 1 turn on the 30 minute counter? If that’s correct, this is a very different problem than the OP’s and not correct at all. That definitely needs attention under warranty.
Sorry I should have been more specific: at 30 minutes it hits the halfway mark as it should. But it moves close to the next hour about 15 minutes early. I’ve read about this in other threads here. For example: https://omegaforums.net/threads/speedmaster-professional-chronograph-problem.33594/ Note Al Archers’s response in that thread. Maybe I’ve saved him some time in this one!
I was going to suggest demagnetizing if the hand jumped when you started the chronograph...but if the hand is misaligned to start with, that's where the repairs need to begin.
Do you think that slight misalignment warrants a repair? Or is this more a matter of how nit picky we want to be? Also: what is your take on the hour hand completing the cycle early?
Great thanks for always being generous with your expert analysis Al! Next time I’m in LA I’ll drop my Speedy off at the OSC. Will they regulate the watch under warranty too? I’m at around +10-12 s/d
With regards to the timing of the watch, here's a thread you may want to review before you take the watch in: https://omegaforums.net/threads/timing-tolerances-a-guide-to-understand-how-they-work.87293/ I use a Speedy 1861 as the basis of the numbers in that thread, and if your watch is +10-12 seconds per day, it may be well within specs. Still there's no harm in asking if they will regulate it. It's really up to you what priority you want to give this error. Having a hand that is slightly misaligned is not going to hurt anything, but I understand that some have the need to have things as close as possible. With the hour recorder, that is a somewhat lengthy response that I have covered in parts here and there, and since it comes up a fair bit I am thinking of making a post specifically about these issues like the one above on timing. A stand alone reference post that explains how it works and why it may not always be accurate. But the bottom line is that the hour recorder is driven off a different parts of the movement to the seconds/minutes recording hands. This means there is an opportunity for them not to be synced 100% Certainly the OP's is out by a lot and there could be a number of reasons for it, but again it would take a lot of explaining, so I'll leave that to another day when I have time to make a detailed post. Omega ha no specific tolerance for the accuracy of the hour recorder in relation to the minute recorder. But what he has is an error that I would not consider acceptable, even though you can still tell what hour it's on... Cheers, Al