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Posted

Hopefully someone can enlighten me?

The image below is from a Lorus with analogue and Digital display that I bought a few months ago. All was good until last week when the analogue hands started losing time. I assumed the battery was in need of changing so replaced both - there is a second battery under the one you can see. Unfortunately the problem persisted.  Lacking any test equipment I did the next best thing and held the watch to my ear. The 'tick' sounded regular until the second hand got to the same section (about 20 seconds) when it was obvious the hand was struggling to move.

After a long head-scratch I noticed the coil of copper that comes from the digital display circuit board (the one just above the battery in the image) and makes contact with the case back. Being loose I removed it and replaced the case back. The watch returned to keeping  perfect time again (for days). Putting the coil back reproduced the problem. It seems the coil is too long and the pressure from the case back is causing the hands (or stem) to bind somewhere. Simple solution was to shorten it. The 'ear' test suggests the issue has largely resolved itself (along with the time-keeping).

What I'm curious about though is what does this coil of wire do? - with or without, the watch functions!

Thanks

PS I should have sent the watch back as it is (was!) still in warranty but where's the fun in that?

Lorus anadigi.jpg

Posted

Yes he was right. After a bit of tweaking I've now fixed it so the alarm/chime works without putting pressure on the movement below. The watch also keeps time. Not sure why it happened in the first place but it definitely seemed to be longer than it needed to be.

Thanks again.

Posted (edited)
  On 10/17/2021 at 2:26 PM, WatchWood said:

Lacking any test equipment I did the next best thing and held the watch to my ear. The 'tick' sounded regular until the second hand got to the same section (about 20 seconds) when it was obvious the hand was struggling to move.

Expand  

OMG! You can hear a quartz watch tick? You must be young. I don't think I could hear a quartz watch tick by the age of 30.

Anyway, that little coiled spring is an electrical connection, usually for contacting the piezo sounder on the caseback or sometimes between a upper and lower circuit board.

Edited by HectorLooi
Remove some text
Posted
  On 10/18/2021 at 1:34 AM, HectorLooi said:

OMG! You can hear a quartz watch tick? You must be young. I don't think I could hear a quartz watch tick by the age of 30.

 

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No, not so young unfortunately. I now need glasses to read but for some reason my hearing seems to getting more sensitive!!

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