I recently got a vintage Constellation with a 551 movement. I've serviced and it's running great. My issue is I can readily manually wind with the crown without the rotor on, but when I attach the rotor the winding via the crown becomes very resistant and difficult. I really don't want to risk breaking teeth, etc. so I thought I'd ask if anyone has had the same issue. The watch ticks happily with or without the rotor attached and keeps good time. Thoughts? Thanks in advance for any assistance.
When you wind the crown with the rotor attached, do you have a sense that the rotor is spinning? Because of the gearing, the rotor will make a lot of rotations for each turn of the crown. If you get it going really fast the whole watch will wobble in your hand. I had this happen a couple of times when the whole auto-winding mechanism was "locked up" (technical term ). However, these watches had not been serviced in a long time.
I had this issue with a Tudor and it turned out the reversing wheels in the auto winding mechanism were sticking.