Omega 165.024 restoration opinions welcomed

Have you considered cleaning the residual tritium out of the hour and minute hand, and just leaving them as skeleton hands?

While I am inclined to agree with @Archer on the value of replacing rusted parts; I have had luck using evap-O-Rust and alum pickling solution to remove rusted parts from 5xx plates. This is all and good until one find that they need a lot of 35$ to 65$ parts for the half dozen or so movements I did this too. And often as not it is the winding pinon and clutch wheel that one needs the most of. These vary between standard set and quickset. and a 563.1568 correcting yoke as much as 60$ on the second hand market.

Evap-O-Rust turns the parts black. So they need a lot of polishing which then of course affects the performance.

Alum dissolves the parts completely. Which are often screws, stems and casing clamps.

Of course with so many movements, cases become desirable. So a 165.024 starts looking really tempting. Yet replica cases seem to be listed for as much or more than the genuine parts are. Probably as this was one of the most popular 'kit' watches.

Newer technologies like fiber lasers can replicate some of these parts, but then they are not at all 'factory.'

Buying up used movements is certainly a way to get good parts, and if the parts you need are not typical wear parts (like some setting parts for example - I don't think I've never replaced a worn out yoke) it can be a good way of getting replacements cheaply.

However I've bought up used movements for this purpose, only to find that the worn parts I'm trying to replace are worn in all the used movements as well. Last year I serviced a vintage watch (not Omega) and I had 5 used movements for it on hand already, and the watch owner sent me 5 more - none of these 10 movements had the parts needed as they were all worn. So after all the expense of buying, shipping, disassembling, and cleaning these, it was all for nothing.

For an amateur buying up movements in the hope that the parts are good is fine - you are doing this as a hobby. For me, time is money, so if I can buy the parts from Omega that is going to be my choice almost every time, unless the owner of the watch wants to spend the time looking for used movements and buying them. But then I have to disassemble them all, clean them all, then check the parts - added labour that they will pay for, that cuts into the savings.

The watch in question here has a badly rusted pallet fork - this tells me that the rust is deep into the movement, and not just in the setting parts near the stem. That pallet fork cannot be saved with evaporust and a polish - it needs to be replaced, likely along with every other train wheel and automatic winding wheel - usually if the rust is that far in, almost all the wheels will need replacing. The big issue is almost always the balance - if the staff is rusted it can be replaced, but if the balance spring is rusted then a new balance will be needed, and this can often make or break the value of restoring a rusted movement, because it is often the most expensive part to purchase. Unless you have a good donor a new balance will be many hundreds from Omega.

Correct, and in the watchmaking section I've gone to great lengths to help demystify the proper methods and procedures to help out amateur watchmakers (and likely some professionals too). But when customers complain because the watch runs 1 second per day out of spec, you know you need more than just the ability to clean and oil...

So we definitely agree that what a hobbyist does and how they work, is quite different than the expectations and demands made on the pros. 👍