Zodiac seawolf around 1970 :-(, my watchmaker gave up on me!! Cal 70-72 help needed

That’s a great methodology to determine the problem. However my WM just gave up. We were discussing a few hours ago and I decided to just send it to someone who is experienced with this zodiac menaces.

Here is an update of today’s conversation with my WM for story-telling purposes, and for avoiding misunderstandings with him, and also to clarify the exact description of the condition. As a matter of fact I now realise that I forgot to mention a lot of small details, but important details, as far as how my WM reacted to challenges, and to my discomfort.
The first fact is that there was a grinding noise when I winded the watch, although the winding worked. That was the reason that I took it for service. My WM took everything apart serviced and cleaned it, also the main spring of course, which he told me that it was easy to open, despite some posts of a friend above, that mention the complexity of Zodiac barrels... When he finished, he called me and told me that the grinding noise insisted, and advised me to cancel the automatic function so that I don't spend precious time and money for really hard to find parts, and just let it be. Also he told me that if I leave it like this the automatic function may break and later all the watch consequently, because some discs of the automatic were really worn. Well, I am not that kind of collector. I like my watches work perfectly and also I sometimes sell watches to buy others so I can't keep broken watches in my collection. Myself doesn't allow me to do so. 😀
This is where the odyseey begins. The first order I made, after many many hours of hard researching, was two discs I mentioned above for the automatic... My WM changed the discs but the grinding noise of the manual winding insisted so he told me to find the other four parts, that I also mention above. I ordered the other four parts from the same source. Luckily the same guy I found for the discs, had everything for the 70-72. My WM changed all of them except a disc (Number 420), which was completely different from the one in my Zodiac, which didn't fit. In his effort to change this disc he broke a screw, it fell in the mechanism, opened everything again and replaced the screw with one he had in his shop. He called me again and told me that he gives up... And then I started posting in this thread...
Today I went to talk to him face to face, to find out what's exactly going on.. Well,..the final result is that my zodiac now cannot be manually winded. The manual wind now is not working. The crown turns but with a really rough noise , but it does not engage the winding mechanism, so the watch only winds automatically.. He told me that he can not do anything else. He tried everything, he spent more than 12 hours on my watch, send it also to his teacher in the capital city of Greece, Athens, who also could not find what's going wrong... So I guess he really tried everything and I respect him more than ever now. Its not bad to say: "Sorry, I cant fix it", than try for months without results... He did not ask for money, and just told me I can't take money if I don't fix a problem. Of course I guess I am one of his good customers, but I think that he would do the same to anyone... He charges me a fixed price for specific movements for their service, which goes up depending complexity. So I know how much I will pay apart from the parts which usually I do the research to find, except if he knows where to find them (I guess what he really means is:"I don't have the time to find them) 😀 . This time he didn't even charge me, for his standard service price.
Now I got two options:
1. The seller I bought the watch told me to send it to him with the parts I bought and he will fix it at his WM. I think he sounds confident about his WM, because he told me: "send it and we will fix it".
2. The guy I am buying the parts is also a watchmaker and told him that he will fix it for sure... However this guy is in India.... :-(

Thank your reading !!!

@Kargol your biggest and main problem is/was the fact that your watchmaker did not take the time to figure out/discover the problem of the watch.
As @Archer said troubleshooting is one of the most important skills that a watchmaker can have. It comes with a lot of experience but, sometimes, you also have to use your brain a little bit, connect the dots, and figure out what part or parts are problematic.

With all due respect, the fact that he suggested removing the automatic ensemble to turn it into a manual-wind and that he also gave you various parts to buy which in the end didn't really fix your problem is a big red flag.

These watches are old and not common but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily more complicated to fix. The base caliber is apparently an AS movement and there are plenty of those. That means that some parts will be interchangeable.

Your points are good, however I don't agree 100%. Please check my post above yours which I wrote a few minutes before yours

My guess is he just doesn't want to take the time to find out what the problem is (and then there's the possibility that he might not be able to figure it out). From the looks of it your watch needs quite a bit of attention meaning running all sorts of tests and partially disassembling and reassembling the movement to accurately pinpoint the problem. Sadly it now looks like there are problems in a few areas/parts. He problably wants to focus on other watches which might also be easier to fix/service.

Right now after all the "work" that's been done on it what problems does the movement have ?

This is possible, but don't forget that he also sent the watch to his teacher with no result. He also didn't charge me ...

The watch now doesn't wind at all manually. Only automatically

Normally, at this point it shouldn't be that complicated to figure out the issue. The manual-wind feature does not need the whole automatic ensemble to function so it can safely be removed, leaving the movement manual-wind only.

By removing the automatic ensemble you would then be able to see most of the parts better and try to discover what the issue is. Why there is a noise when the watch is wound and why does it not charge the mainspring, why do the gears not engage, etc.

I don't know what exactly he did . The truth is that the last five parts were brought to him Friday night. Saturday morning he called me just to say I quit. So I guess he just got angry or didn't want to spend more time. .... I don't blame him though. He preferred to don't take money and stop losing his time. Probably he realised that he would never fix it even if I bought all the parts that are made in the world for this caliber

I have even bought a new dial for this zodiac, and I intend to relume the old black one. That’s what real love is !! 😀

That’s all the parts that were changed :



And that’s the one new part that didn’t fit:

How can someone have a guarantee that a watch sent for service to another country to a watchmaker that you don't know, will ever come back ?

it`s called Trust. without it, life is not worth living. and research/due diligence here...... kind regards. achim