Dear All,

This Omega f 300Hz I bought recently was in need of a service, she was running 15sec/day ahead (too much for an accutron !)

Here the watch :





My watchmaker did his best but was not able to get the watch back to original specs. One need a very specific equipement to work on these Accutron movements, such as high resolution binoculars or special timegrapher, and ofcourse the experience.

A bit of research here and there disclosed the following possibilities :
-French specialist “cliquet75”
-UK, Electric-watches
-Rob Berkavicious (Bangkok)
-Dutch watchmaker
Regarding costs, they all are about at the same levels .. depending on the parts that could be required.

I inquired with our belgian customs administration on how to send a watch abroad for repair and not have to pay duties upon return. This turned out to be a nightmare .. I was advised to secure some customs documents that are available only in transportation companies .. only one such company answered they could provide me with the documents but for a fee of minimum 200.€ .. I gave up !

Left to me were the french and the dutch watchmakers.
I choose the dutch watchmaker and I got the watch back last week.

The works performed were excellent, I received some pics during the process .. here they are with the comments of the watchmaker, I believe they could possibly be interest for fellow members having the same problem of servicing an Accutron movement.

The Index Finger with the Juwel which is driving the Index Wheel was out of alignment and the movement was dirty and not running.
The watch has been inspected and the Electronic Block with the gear train has been disassembled clean oiled reassembled and Adjusted. The Index Wheel has been replaced to make sure that the movement will run for another 20+ Years.
Here is the Index Wheel with the mikro Dimensions. Notice the corrosion made around the teeth over the years.


There are signs of cell acid damages on the Cell Minus Pole collector resulting poor electrical kontakt. This issue has been solved by coating the Cell Minus Pole collector with electrical silver coat. See damage in the picture.


The O-Ring in the watch case has been dissolved and has to be removed and replaced with an original O-Ring. The attempt to seal the case by inserting an O-Ring in the Case back was not good idea. This issue has been solved by cleaning the case from the old dissolved O-Ring and inserting a new original one.





Today the watch is running in Chronometer range the way should be, but you mentioned the date stop working. As mentioned earlier this is one of the typical failures the F300 movement has since the Date disc is made of 50+ Years old plastic.
I will work on the dial side and I will replace the old damaged disc with an aftermarket Metal disc which will run forever and I will give you full 2 Year warranty for all watch functionality
I have proceeded with the revision of the Dial Calendar part and here are the 1st impressions.
Here is the damage tooth under 250 times digital magnification. It is just minor but enough to stop the disc from jump at 24:00 cause the calendar gears just hitting at 24.00 ONLY the top edge of the date disc teeth.Quick date set is not affected at all as the calendar gears use the whole teeth to move the disc to the next date.






Here you can see the original plastic date disc versus aftermarket custom metal version.






I will need to test the watch for a week before the delivery to make sure everything is the way should be and verify the accuracy on analyser and on move dynamically.




From the final test on Tuning Fork analyser you can see that the Omega is running on 0 Sek/day.


A nice result, as you can see !
Thank you for your attention,

 

Sorry, something went wrong .. pictures did not show up !! I'll have to rework the thread ..

 

Cool I have one to repair anyone now how to contact cliquet75 ? I saw a lot of post but not real direct contact.

Paul

 

will send you a PM ..

 

@malilis
Could you share the German watchmaker?
Electric Watches have closed a for longer period.

 

Thanks for sharing. I would like to see the missing pictures.
I've read somewhere, when trying to understand if I wanted an Accutron in my collection, that the main problem with these movements was the different voltage of the batteries (they where lower).
Is this true?

 

I was going to pick up this point earlier but be aware that the movements used in Omega hummers are not direct copies of any Accutron design, they are quite different and were in fact developed by ESA using just the basic tuning fork principle. ESA movements usually run fine on a modern battery.

These are not Accutron movements, as I recalll, Bulova get a name check for the idea on the back but the A word isn’t mentioned anywhere on them. You are correct in that some Accutron movements designed for 1.35v Mercury cells may need re-indexing to work well with 1.5v modern cells, it’s best to get one that is already done.

 

Thanks, @padders. Nice to read that there are no problems with modern batteries. I'll look for a F300 for my collection very soon, I'm still studying. I see a lot of F300 on eBay!

 

I`m happy to have several tuning fork watches in my collection of different brand and so I learnd the hard way that if such a watch doesn`t had a service recently by a qualified person and I mean really qualified you have not much fun with them.
They all have commonly the same issues regardless what the sellers tale is:
Date wheel broken - the plastik peaces fell into the running movement causing even more troubles.
Index wheel - worn out, dirty beyond repair.
Sometimes parts are missing which you don`t see if you`re not an expert.
Most of the time you need NOS parts which are not easy to obtain.

A spaceview is a even more difficult watch `cause you see every part of the upper side of the movement so service in this case means mostly change the upper parts with NOS ones so you like to look at it.

So folks prepare to spend lots of money

 

Crystal clear, thanks for pointing it out. I'll keep in mind, for sure.

 

I’m sorry but I don’t agree. I own Omega, Longines, Eterna, Bulova, Citizen and Rado tuning fork watches and once serviced (properly!) will just run and run to incredibly high specs. Rob Berkavicius has serviced several of mine and I can assure you the costs have been less than what I was charged for a routine service of a Seiko 6138 chronograph or a Bell Matic.
What you do get with the electro-mechanical watches is value for money and since they’re really difficult to fake (and perceived to be not that valuable by criminal elements who exploit this industry) you can buy knowing that most of the time you’re buying the genuine article. Not something you can say about an indecent proportion of the Speedtimers and Breitling navigators you see on the market. Note that new- an f300 sold for 1.5 times the price of a Speedie.
So my counsel would be that interested parties do their due diligence as with any purchase but don’t be scared off the tuning fork watches. They’re undervalued and most are high quality. The f300’s in particular are top drawer and if one went down the path of buying an Omega Speedsonic, Eterna Chronolympic or Longines Ultronic chronograph you’re buying a seriously good piece of kit

 

concerning the replacement of batteries: my ACCUTRON runs W/O problems with ENERGIZER silver 390/389 MD

 

Thanks @Pianotuna for your point of view. This is positive.

 

Here is mine from 1966:

 

True but only visible to experts.

Disagree - Spaceviews are faked all over Franken mostly but not legit and crazy pricings charged.

Technically it`s always the same you`re buying different design.

I agree in full.

Yeah thats a personal matter on your financial situation and which country you live in.

 

This is not completetley wrong but it`s not completetley right also.
Mainly you have mechanical and electrical movements. The tuning fork movements are electrical and a technic of its own `cause there is no escapement driven by a battery.
So electro-mechanical movements are as an exampel ESA Dynotron or Citizen Cosmotron X8.

 

As we are speaking of tuning fork watches don`t forget the famous Citizen GX
and of olden USSR times there are illegal Bulova copys from Czech and China origin but they are really rare and hard to get.

 

This is true the old mercury batteries have a Voltage of 1.35V and the silver-oxide type you only can buy nowadays have 1.55V.
The mercury is the reason why they are vanished from the market.
So in very rare cases the higher Voltage can cause running problems and as far as I know there is only one movement who can even brake down or runs to fast with the modern battery.
But any tuning fork movement frequency can be adjustet to 1.55V without build in diodes ore buying special 1.35V batteries but I strongly recommend a complete service before.
And of course you need some specialist on this movements with the right gear and tools.
Speaking of this gear thats a story of its own `cause this are very old and hard to get and you really have to understand them. Mostly they are broken and you have to repair them first.

 

And here is a Omega I`m happy to own:

 

Wow