I pretty much service the majority of watches, including quartz – some watchmakers just won’t won’t work on them. David sent me His Tag Heuer Professional as it wasn’t working with a new battery and its been over 10 years since it was last serviced.
The thing is with quartz, although the brands pretty much recommend the same service intervals as their mechanical counterparts, in reality its not needed. The force going through the components of a quartz watch powered by a battery is a lot less than that of a mechanical one powered by a mainspring, as such, wear on parts occurs at a slower rate. Thats not to say you should never service it, but if it goes a few years over the recommended service period, and everything else otherwise seems okay, I wouldn’t worry.
Case back removed and we can see the quartz movement, they aren’t particularly pretty, and as with the majority of quartz movements, they aren’t particularly expensive either. As such, it is often more economical to replace the whole movement with a new one, rather than servicing the old one – and thats exactly what I will do here.
The crown gasket is starting to break down and part of it has left a nice mess on the case tube – I will clean this off before fitting a new seal into the crown.
Movement removed and as always I line the hands up before protecting them prior to removal.
New movement to the top of the picture in the holder, old one at the bottom.
Dial and hands fitted to the new movement, and its ticking away nicely.
Old seal on the left from the crown, new one is on the right, I’m also fitting a new case back seal.
Movement fitted back into the case.
Although its a quartz movement, with less tests to carry out, I still test it over five days to ensure its functioning as it should before being returned to the owner.
Thanks for reading.
The Watch Professional
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