A Curiosity to me, but I bet someone here knows...

[BigSapphire]

My Seiko SARB013 is exhibiting an odd (to me) behavior.  On wrist, it keeps quite reasonable time - plus or minus a few seconds per day. Laid crystal-down, it will gain a few seconds overnight. Stored crystal-up it sometimes keeps similarly decent time, but sometimes (only sometimes) it loses up to 2 minutes overnight.  Crown-down it gains 30 seconds or so. 

The ol' Washi time grapher shows low amplitude (140 or so) crystal-up, which grows rapidly to 230 in other orientations. This is repeatable at will. It also shows minus three minutes per day to plus two minutes or so, dependent on the whims of the evil spirit apparently occupying the case, not so repeatable at all.  As mentioned, the real world performance is not nearly as bad as the timegrapher would have one think. 

I never bonded with this watch anyhow, and seldom wear it.  I'd think about selling it, but don't want to pass it along without an exorcism.  I would guess the simplest thing would be to just swap the movement out for a new one, which I might could handle with a bit of advice.  I have tried carefully demagnetizing it (no change). I've always though the stem hard to pull out, wind, adjust the time, etc. Could it be not fully releasing or?    I have other 6R15 powered watches which run just great - this one is possessed.  I'm curious for sure.  Ideas? 

[JohnR725]

pictures the timing machine would be nice often times will see something you don't.

then the number you have is a style number we really like to see the model numbers so if I'm right it's this Movement 6R15 23J.  That should be a decent movement which then brings up the usual questions of how old is it?

One of the things yournoticing is if you put it on the timing machine you get an instantaneous reading. If you leave it in a position for 12 hours you get the average of that time. This is why you can see a difference of overnight versus the timing machine. interesting experiment would be to wind the watch up and let it run about 15 minutes. Usually in a time you wind the watch up you let it settle down between 15 and about an hour just depends on how long you want to wait but it's usually initially there'll be a lot of work can be fluctuations.. The same as if you change timing positions rapidly you need a little bit of time for them to settle down that always be a fluctuation so changing positions usually need about 30 seconds. So if you wound the watch up left it perhaps on the microphone crystal up got us a picture of the initial timing. Then wait 12 hours get another picture and 25 hours later get another picture after that. Then we can see the effect of the decreasing amplitude is the watches running down as to how it affects timekeeping and amplitude etc.

A lot of the symptoms you have a sounds like a watch that hasn't been serviced in a very long time. In other words the lubrication's dry up they no longer do their job. This is where servicing the movement would do a lot but at the cost of replacement movement is often times cheaper just to replace it.

 

[Klassiker]

As John says, the timegrapher traces would be useful to see, but the 90 deg. amplitude drop dial-up is indicating a big enough problem alone to recommend a service. The loss of minutes overnight could be due to the combined effects of weak amplitude and the extra friction from the date-change.

[BigSapphire]

Thanks!  I'll do the timegrapher experiment and gather some photos.  Looks like I need to call some of the folks listed on the AWCI site to line up some service.  The watch is about 10 years old, so the dried up lubricant makes sense, especially as it rarely gets wound or used.  The movement is marked 6R15B btw.  Thanks for the input. 

[jdm]

3 hours ago, BigSapphire said:

Looks like I need to call some of the folks listed on the AWCI site to line up some service.

Let us know how it goes. Even for a watch worth $200 the cost of servicing may easily exceed that, and be unreasonable to spend. 

[clockboy]

On 7/19/2021 at 1:12 AM, BigSapphire said:

My Seiko SARB013 is exhibiting an odd (to me) behavior.  On wrist, it keeps quite reasonable time - plus or minus a few seconds per day. Laid crystal-down, it will gain a few seconds overnight. Stored crystal-up it sometimes keeps similarly decent time, but sometimes (only sometimes) it loses up to 2 minutes overnight.  Crown-down it gains 30 seconds or so. 

The ol' Washi time grapher shows low amplitude (140 or so) crystal-up, which grows rapidly to 230 in other orientations. This is repeatable at will. It also shows minus three minutes per day to plus two minutes or so, dependent on the whims of the evil spirit apparently occupying the case, not so repeatable at all.  As mentioned, the real world performance is not nearly as bad as the timegrapher would have one think. 

I never bonded with this watch anyhow, and seldom wear it.  I'd think about selling it, but don't want to pass it along without an exorcism.  I would guess the simplest thing would be to just swap the movement out for a new one, which I might could handle with a bit of advice.  I have tried carefully demagnetizing it (no change). I've always though the stem hard to pull out, wind, adjust the time, etc. Could it be not fully releasing or?    I have other 6R15 powered watches which run just great - this one is possessed.  I'm curious for sure.  Ideas? 

I have read about this issue before (sorry can’t remember where). Some have found if a watch runs slightly fast they put the watch face down over night to correct. Mechanical watches do run differently in various positions and when regulated these differences are averaged out.