As last resort; a quartz substitute ?

[Endeavor]

Okay Gents;

For the people not familiar with the Laco story; here a reminder: https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/9735-ive-ran-out-of-ideas-tricks-help/?page=0#comment-88847

Behind the scenes I (with the assistance of @JohnR725) , continued working on the Laco 501 & 503 ladies movements, trying to find out what causes the beat-error and the wild fluctuating daily rate. A new spring was bought and installed, but no real improvement. In the end I started, in logical sequence, swapping parts between the two 503 movements (jeweled) and the balance & pallet fork of the 501 movement.

Even though I ended up with a movement which runs for over 30hrs and with a reasonable amplitude (about 230-260 degrees), it still performs terrible; a beat error of 9.5ms to 10ms and a daily rate from - 60 CD to +340 sec/d CU. Not something I stand behind giving to a relative.

Even JohnR725, puzzled by what's happening, purchased a Laco (Durowa) 501 and he too observed to most weird behavior of his movement.

The new watch-cases are of 20-micron rolled gold and the dials and hands are fine. The idea was that these watches were going to be used as dress-accessories and the receiver doesn't care for mechanical, probably prefers a quarts movement as substitute.

I would assume that when quarts watches became popular, some of these mechanical ladies watches were converted to quartz (?)

My search so far for a quartz substitute at CousinsUK didn't yield matching results. Has anybody any idea's which (cheap) movement I could made to fit?

Here are the dimensions: movement body 12.8x19.2mm x 3.5mm high (excluding dial) and the hands diameter are 1.10 mm (hour) and 0.55mm (minutes)

I know, not something we like to see on this forum, but one can't win every battle to win the war, so any help to salvage something of the watches is appreciated

 

 

[yankeedog]

Likewise not much luck finding a quartz movement but if you do a search of 5.75 x 8.5  on www.ranfft.de it will cough up a big long list of  movements with those dimensions

[Endeavor]

Yes indeed, it does ....... If quartz is not available, I have to think long and hard before trying another one of these type of mechanical movements. Seems a bit Russian Roulette which ones works well.

Thanks for you help and I will keep this option in my mind !

[yankeedog]

The other option is a home made movement holder.and cheap miyota movement out of a fashion watch.you could go down to the local junk shop and see what you could mock up.this way you could play Russian roulette without shooting yourself in the foot.

[yankeedog]

The more I think about it the less I am inclined to believe you will find a quartz movement the will match the feet on the original dial.are you prepared to alter the dial?btw Otto Frei has nos AS 1051 movement. 5 1/4 x8 1/4. Pretty close to your specs.

Edited November 30, 2018 by yankeedog
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[Endeavor]

Thanks a lot ! The dials are the least of my worries; dials feet off and double sided sticky tape should do the trick. Perhaps my assumption that some of these watches were, at the beginning of the quartz period, converted wasn't correct.

I think I may indeed wait for a small cheap quartz flee-market find and try to make a conversion. If that doesn't work, well that may be the end of the line for these Laco's.

Searching the net, I found more of the same NOS Laco ladies watches, makes you wonder why ! Perhaps the factory produced a whole batch of junk?

Anyway, thanks for thinking with me and suggesting solutions

Edited November 30, 2018 by Endeavor

[yankeedog]

casual calipering on three different quartz movement canal street watches indicate that at +/- 18 mm length and +/- 14 mm width, they are about an RCH too wide.