Our esteemed forum watchmakers have made it clear that watches need to be regularly serviced if used.

A car mechanic once said of the 1980's Toyota engines: "They are so robust that you can't kill them; even if you're not great with your oil changes, they seem to just keep going with little noticible wear."

In a similar vein: are any of the vintage Omega movements so robust that they tend not to need a load of replaced parts even if one gets negligent with servicing? I heard the 321's are actually quite hearty.

 

That myth about the Toyota 22r and related engines is kinda false. An engine will wear under those circumstances. Toyota was known to swap out engines without telling people to give the illusion of robustness. They are stout simple engines but not immune to wear.

 

x2. And just because you can't kill them doesn't mean they are running well. Can be down on power, have excessive emissions, etc. So possibly a bunch of worn parts even though nothing is yet 'broken' to the point of the engine not working. And then if you eventually rebuild many parts may be out of spec, and require replacement or your rebuild will be crap.

 

they were replacing engines without telling ( or charging presumably) the owners. I find that hard to believe.

 

Then there's this guy, with 3 million miles on his Volvo

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/201...3-million-miles-in-his-1966-volvo-1800s/?_r=0

Wonder if he wears an Ed White?

 

Without charging. Telling them was a grey area. Porsche did the same thing with the first boxsters and BMW not very quietly on the early e46m3's

 

The car was brought into it as an analogy. Still interested in the watch angle.

 

I would offer the following based on what I see on the bench.

The high wear items are the pivots, and the ones most affected are those closer to the source of the power - the mainspring.

Why they wear is a result of dried lubricants along with accumulation of dust particles in the lube. It is difficult to appreciate how abrasive dust can be, but if you fabricate parts on a regular basis, which need to be polished to a high sheen, you must keep your diamatine polishing paste covered and away from dust. A tiny bit of dust in the diamantine will result in scratches to the finished surface that's how abrasive dust is. Even in a closed sealed case there is dust and it always finds a way into the case as the years go by without a service and new seals...

The mechanics behind the wear is universal, not restricted to any type or brand of movements. One calibre or brand is just as affected as any other, as long as the parts of the movement are made to the required standards and lubricated and clean to start with.

All pivots should be finished to the same standard, that is high polish followed by burnishing, this hardens and compresses the outer coating of the pivot and provides the best wearing surface. But all pivots will wear given enough time and gummed up contaminated lubricant, the more power the pivot is exposed to - the more at risk it is for wear.

I don't remember ever seeing worn pivots beyond the 3rd wheel towards the escapement, and in my discussions with many other professional independent watchmakers over many years, they experience the same. Why is this? the power is so low on these pivots beyond the 3rd wheel that wear is unlikely. A balance staff pivots on the other hand will show wear, but you have to consider the number of oscillations and amplitude of these oscillations that the balance pivots are exposed to, as compared to the escape wheel.

Example:
In house I have a 100 year old wrist watch movement, center wheel worn severly, both pivots had to be repaired, one replaced completely and the other cut down and refinished, the balance staff pivots show slight wear, tips tapered slightly instead of parallel, as for the remainder of movement? - it is in perfect condition. These findings are in-line with my experience on vintage pieces.

Bottom line, service is your best assurance of long life, no matter the brand or calibre.

Rob

 

Thanks Rob – very interesting!

My view is that "robustness" is largely a myth in the sense that as good as the Omega 30mm movement is, it really isn't intrinsically more "robust" than, say, the Longines 30L, or any equivalent quality movement. But because there are so many vintage Omegas in circulation, and so many spare parts available, the perception is often exaggerated.

Having said that, I haven't found a watchmaker yet who doesn't hold the two, above-mentioned movements in high regard.

Cheers,

Tony C.

 

Hmmm...interesting question.

As a result of being independent, I see a large cross section of brands, from Patek on down the line. The type of wear (if there is any) is totally dependent on the service quality and interval.

I will say that there are two calibres that come to mind:

- automatic Rolex's, the issue being the small diameter of the rotor axle in comparison to the diameter of the rotor and weight, combined with the short height of the supporting jewel, which causes the rotor to rub up against the movement, a poor design in my opinion

- bumpermatic movements, for some reason these seem to experience wear in the rotor bearings along with wear in the mainplate and barrel bridge for the mainspring arbor. The other common problem is the rotor weight attachment screws to the axle plate, the screws are very short and loosen and fall out, and then get jammed up in the movement.

Rob

 

Rob, many thanks, great replies all. What prompted the question was that a local watchmaker said that the cal 321 is very robust because the hardened metals on many parts and they tended to break rather than garner excessive wear. Intuitively I would assume that softer metals would wear more quickly, and that there would be more variance in the quality of materials used by the various brands, but as you say, the service intervals appear to be the dominant factor.

Regarding the Rolexes: does you comment refer to the esteemed 1500 series movements as well? Thanks again.

 

I would think robustness = ability to maintain accuracy or operation when movement condition is sub-optimal. Given wear is wear and there is no magic bullet to avoid wear, robustness is really about operational sensitivity to wear. A way to adjudge movement robustness would be to take different movements and run them till they stopped running. Obviously some movements would consistently run longer than other movements before stopping. These movements would be more robust. If you wanted to further refine this notion of robustness, you would test the movements for accuracy and set a threshold for accuracy and see which movements maintained accurate operation for the longest in the absence of service.

Whether robustness has value or not, given the accepted notion of maintenance as be the right thing to do is another question.

 

Totally agree will all of your notions. While this would be the scientific way to go about answering this, I think for now we may have to rely on those with years at the bench to share their observational experiences.

 

Most do a bit of this test everytime they use a watch winder.

 

All good information so far. I guess one thing that struck me reading this is that many think of the ability of a watch to stay running while in need of service as a good thing - I don't necessarily share that opinion. In fact the ability of a watch to keep running even though it needs service can just encourage false notions about not needing to fix it "if it ain't broke" that you see often on watch forums. This leads to even more damage when you do actually service it...

In terms of wear, my experience is a bit different that Rob's. I do see worn escape wheel pivots and 4th wheel pivots certainly - in fact I have a Cal. 552 in a vintage SM300 here right now that I am replacing virtually every wheel in - all the automatic wheels and all the train wheels from the great wheel to the escape wheel - they all have worn pivots. Escape wheels needing replacement are not common, but do happen maybe a couple times per year.

Although loads and speed play a part, other design factors can influence the wear. For example when I service some ETA movements like the 2824, 2836, or 2892, the third wheel pivot is often worn when others are fine. Why? Because the jewel on this wheel in the main plate is very small in relation to the size and load on the pivot:



This limits the amount of oil that can be placed here without going into an over-oiling situation, and the smaller the amount of oil, the less time it will last with all else being equal. Also it will be this pivot (not the one on the bridge side) that is worn, because this jewel is smaller than the one on the bridge. So let's just say I replace more 3rd wheels on these than I do intermediate wheels, and the intermediate wheel has higher loads on it.

Each movement has it's own quirks. I would agree with the point made about Rolex automatic rotors - worn axles are common (yes even on the 1500 series movements). But Omega's 55X series has the same problem, but in this case it's a brass bushing (pinion) that wears, and it's much easier to replace than a Rolex axle is. So although they both suffer from the same wear, one is smarter (in my view) about how it was designed because of the ease of repair. Having said that, I see steel ball bearings in modern rotors that are worn out all the time as well.

I do get the feeling that production methods can have a big impact on the life of parts. It seems a lot of modern train wheels for example have pivots that last fine until there is a hint of wear. But once they get any wear at all, it seems to wear the pivot much faster that you would see on a vintage watch. Not sure if materials or heat treatment has changed in a way to almost make the pivot case hardened rather than through hardened. Seems to act that way at least.

Cheers, Al

 

Excellent insights, Al. Much appreciated.

 

those are the threads that keep people coming back here...

 

let me ask a Q then: when we talk about robustness - the Lemania 5100 will get many nods... what specifically makes a 5100 more robust than eg a 7750?
is there an answer to that Q.?

 

I love threads like this!