I picked up this 1965 6206-8001 from the bay back in October as a non runner.. It had a nice dial and handset so I thought it'll make a nice little project when I have the tools and time. The watch arrived and true to the description it wouldn't run - at all. Also when setting the time and date it was very difficult to get the hands or day/date wheels to move as the keyless works were slipping and jumping all over the place, the achillies heel of the 62xx calibre.
Anyway this weekend I decided I had collected enough tools to tackle a service on it. I have regularly dabbled with watches to the extent of removing movements, changing crystals, hands, dials etc, but I have never had the testicular fortitude to tackle a full movement strip, clean, lube and re-assembly. Uncharted territory for me.
It didn't take long to remove the rotor, take the movement out then take the handset, dial and daywheel off and it soon looked like this:
If you notice there is a tiny spring to the right of the 10 and 9 on the datewheel that applies pressure to the daywheel locator. When I removed the plate that holds this spring in place (you guessed it) it went flying! I knew about the small spring underneath the plate that does the same job for the datewheel locator because it is similar to the 62mas and I have changed datewheels over on those calibers before.
So that was the first calamity, I searched and searched on table, the carpet, my lap, everywhere but it was gone. Not a complete disaster as I have a couple of 6206 donor movements so I could always harvest one from them.
So I carried on stripping the plates and levers, datewheels and calendar gears until I was left with just the keyless works on this side of the movement:
I removed the keyless works (which were absolutely shot) until I had a clean mainplate (I took the picture before I had removed the stem release pawl and centre gear):
It was now time to flip the watch over and start on the winding mechanism:
I removed the winding bridge and stripped it, I think that Seiko's winding mechanism is a brilliantly simple and robust way of engineering a watch autowinding solution:
I'm now down to the heart of the watch, mainspring barrel, balance and wheeltrain:
Off came the click and the gear it operates on, then I removed the main bridge to start to expose the wheel train:
Next to go was the balance cock, balance and two wheels:
Then the pallet bridge, pallet and escape wheel bridge were next off:
The mainspring barrel and escape wheel were removed:
And finally the centre wheel was removed and everything was in my container:
Once it was in this state I collected all the wheels (apart from the mainspring barrel) and gave them a good seeing to in the ultrasound bath. Next in the bath was the mainplate and all the bridges. When these were done I did the fiddliest job ever and pegged out all the jewel holes. I even removed the jewel caps and cleaned underneath them with alcohol!
Because I had lost the tiny daywheel locator spring I did this all again and stripped another 6206 movement I had. This had the benefit of a keyless works that actually worked so I needed that anyway, it wasn't really time wasted!
Anyway I took a few snaps of some components after hand cleaning or finishing them:
Mainspring barrel:
Bridge, pallet and third wheel:
Pallet bridge:
Once everything was clean, I started on the re-assembly, oiling the jewels with the tiniest amount of oil as I went along:
It was quite a feeling of achievement once I had the wheel train and pallet in place and applied pressure to the barrel, the pallet started flying back and forth and I knew that part was correctly done!
The trickiest part out of the whole rebuild for me was getting the balance located properly in the jaws of the pallet. After about five attempts it was in and a quick shake showed that it lived!
The winding bridge and gears went on and that was the engine side of the mainplate done:
These little blighters are the 62xx calibres weak spot. The date corrector and stem gear do wear badly and once they have worn setting the time and date becomes almost impossible on bad cases. Luckily the spare movement I stripped had a good pair of these:
The keyless works were reassembled and lubed:
Then the calendar mechanism with a new datewheel was refitted:
The daywheel and the dial went on:
The handset:
On went the movement retaining ring and back in the case:
The rotor and a new caseback gasket were fitted:
The back was screwed back on:
And she's running like a top!
It's taken me a good portion of Saturday and Sunday to do, but I was going into it blind having never attempted anything as in depth as this before. To say I'm pleased is an understatement though, it's given me an immense feeling of achievement to know I have actually serviced a non running watch and got it back to good health.
Apologies for the less than perfect pictures, and I'm sure some of my terminology is wide of the mark but I can only get better!
*The edits are because of my appalling spelling
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