My first Omega was the James Bond Sky Fall. I had it 3 years and all off a sudden it would not go past 9.00pm. Second hand still went round but the other hands and date didn't. No problem, it was repaired under warranty. I then bought the James Bond Aqua Terra. And guess what, the same thing has happened to this watch. Trouble is that its just out of warranty. It took this back to my Omega boutique where I bought it and they sent it away. The result is a £650.00 bill. Now if my watch was running slow and in need of an obvious service, fair enough. I pay for the service where and decide where I want to take it. However 2 mechanical failures smarts like made. Am I wrong to expect that Omega watches should be more mechanically sound, Or should I start saving now to have my 3 remaining Omegas repaired??
Sounds like bad luck to me. I can't speak for others, but most of my collection is Omegas from the 1950s right up through this year. Other than routine maintenance and adjusting the timing on some pieces, I've never had a mechanical issue with any of them.
This sounds like an hour wheel failure...similar to this: If you use the second crown position a lot to adjust the date, and move the hour hand around the dial a lot in the process, it can cause the hour wheel to wear out, losing the one hour "clocks" of the hand first, then eventually it will stop driving through the date change process, and stop around 9 or 10 PM. When adjusting the date, take the path that requires the least number of turns of the hour wheel. So if you are adjusting to a date that is say 25 days ahead of the current date, then adjust the hands backwards to get there, rather than forwards. Cheers, Al
I feel your pain @Bluefish Both of my Aquaterras (Cal.8500 and Cal.8508) suffered similar failures, shortly after each watch went out of warranty. Hoping to save some money I took my Cal.8508 Aquaterra to a local watchmaker for repair. There was a long delay (six weeks or so) while he searched for a particular replacement part. The part finally arrived and he completed the repair. Except that the hour hand was now misaligned; it was only lined up with the hour marker when the minute hand was at about 15 min past the hour. I realized it was a mistake taking the watch to a (likely) non-Omega certified watchmaker and subsequently took both watches to our local Boutique and left them for repair. They came back about a month later. I got a "package deal" on the repairs, which came out to about $410/watch. At least I got this nifty set of used parts from the Cal.8508 watch, including some pieces of the co-axial escapement: So one lesson learned here is that it's probably best to have a watch with an 8500 series movement repaired by a certified watchmaker with an official Omega parts account (like the Forum's @Archer ), or have Omega itself do the repair. And interestingly, my 50th Anniversary Seamaster GMT, a 25-year old Cal.1128 watch (pictured by @Archer above) just began exhibiting the same behaviour: the hour hand stops advancing at about 9pm. So this one will be headed to Omega for repair, too. But it was long past due for a service anyway. P.S. I now follow @Archer 's advice on setting the date for these calibres.
Have you ever caught a bluefish? The only thing that's worse than trying to unhook them and keep all your fingers is eating them. Fun to catch, nightmare to unhook, terrible to eat.