Gruen 560 RSS

[EdB]

As being fairly new to Horology this movement seems a bit different regarding disassembly. I was able to take the movement completely down but I did so more in the case instead of a movement holder due to the automatic wind complication. I have also noted a couple of tension spring that I am unsure if they should be removed during the cleaning process or should they be left in? The other issue I'm having is removing the mainspring from the barrel. The ratchet wheel seems to be permanently attached to the arbor, so some light attempts to separate the lid by applying pressure to the arbor, there appears to be quite a bit of resistance so I did not want to apply to much pressure on the arbor to get the lid to pop open. How should I attack this situation? Are there any disassembly / assembly video's data available? I also found a loose screw within the movement which I currently do see the need for at this point, I have to wait to see if a screw was missing during the reassembly process. 

Thanks, 

Ed... 

[Nucejoe]

Its a Felsa, Dr ranfft shows 560ss, no mention of 550 RSS.

Rotor should be removed to check & clean the jewel.

There should be a ratchet screw which you remove to pop the ratchet wheel off, have you removed the winder module ( auto device)? 

Will you show a pic of the ratchet wheel and what your talking about.

Regs

[EdB]

6 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

Its a Felsa, Dr ranfft shows 560ss, no mention of 550 RSS.

Rotor should be removed to check & clean the jewel.

There should be a ratchet screw which you remove to pop the ratchet wheel off, have you removed the winder module ( auto device)? 

Will you show a pic of the ratchet wheel and what your talking about.

Regs

Ratchet wheel not typical. Here are some photos of the barrel with the ratchet wheel attached. 

[EdB]

Here's a photo of the movement before disassembly. Rotor does not resemble the 560 SS. I have service another movement that was similar to the 560 SS with the movable detente. The movement I am currently working on had to have the blued retaining screws removed to remove the rotor. 

[Nucejoe]

Strange, had never seen this design before. hopefully someone would come with the right advice.

Good luck pal.

[mikepilk]

Here http://thewatchspotblog.com/?p=4176 it refers to the base calibre of the 560 RSS as a Bidlingmaier ebauche, with an added automatic winding mechanism. Not a company I've heard of.

[EdB]

Further attempts to get this apart and noticed it appears that the ratchet wheel screws onto the arbor. I attempted to rotate it in a clockwise direction (ratchet wheel) and it appears to wind the mainspring. Rotating it in the counter clockwise direction brings it to a positive stop. Completely perplexed!

[EdB]

Hi all! 

Persistence saved the day. So after thinking about the barrel and not finding any additional information on the internet I attempted to remove the barrel lid once again after soaking the assembly in Naptha and blowing out the excess with a bulb blower. I applied slight more downward pressure on the barrel assembly and Pop it opened! Elated I took some photos to give everyone a look inside this barrel. The stem protruding through the center has a small square nut holding it into the barrel itself, that was what I was seeing under the microscope. Hopefully this additional information and photos will help someone down the line. 

Thanks to all who replied. 

PS found out where the extra screw came from the winding counter weight was missing the center screw and the other two were loose. Problem solved!

 

[JohnR725]

4 hours ago, mikepilk said:

Here http://thewatchspotblog.com/?p=4176 it refers to the base calibre of the 560 RSS as a Bidlingmaier ebauche, with an added automatic winding mechanism. Not a company I've heard of.

This represents one of the problems for new people and watch repair who made their watch? We can have a name on the dial another name on the movement like this made by Gruen and who actually made the movement? A lot of times the movement maker would put their initials under the balance wheel or under the dial? Then if we don't find it there if we had the line size of the movement and a decent picture the setting parts found in to the dial we could use the fingerprint system and figure out who actually made the movement which might even lead us to a tech sheet.

As you gave us a name it narrows it down but I don't have a size and setting parts would be nice but there's a list. So unfortunately it tells us they made a lot of automatic watches so we need more information.

http://cgi.julesborel.com/cgi-bin/matcgi2?begin=BID_&end=BID_&label=Calibres_Manufactured_by_BIDLINGMEIER

http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&0&2uswk&Bifora_000

Now the problem with information is what if someone got it wrong? If you take the first leg to go through the movements are all automatic I'm not seeing anything that matches although maybe I didn't click on every single watch. So maybe somebody guessed wrong as to who made this

so more searching reveals a movement on eBay where it doesn't look like any markings of the balance wheel and conveniently they show the back dial side plus the give us a size so to  11.5 for the size basically are standard watch size and who require more research. as I'm just not quite sold on who made this.

 

[JohnR725]

Other ways to find watches that we can not identify is the bestfit book as I mentioned above the fingerprint system we look at the setting parts we know the diameter size of movement we might be lucky and find it. Or there's another section in the book that has pictures of automatic movements we just start at the beginning and go through and see if we find anything that looks similar or maybe the exactly the same we might be lucky which might be unfortunate?

Question now is why did I say unfortunate?

Does appear the watch was made by Gruen the bestfit company lists the automatic parts. Now this is a good and bad news thing it depends upon where you are in the world and the access to material houses? Problem is I don't know how foreign the world the best fit system went whether it's a worldwide part availability or just the US. So for instance if I needed a part I would call my local material house and asked her. Because it's a relatively new material house she would never have the part but she would order it from wherever bestfit parts come from. Then a couple weeks we find out if it exists she might find out sooner but I've had good luck doing this. The problem with bestfit another systems are the material houses online do not list everything they have so that means you have to send them an email reach out and give them all the parts description and hopefully will be nice and try to look it up for you. Because often times it's easier to find the best fit parts which is really a part made by that company but under their numbering system then to find an original Gruen part which you could also try to do.

The problem now becomes I'm looking at two of the sources that I typically look at for tech sheets and Gruen is  not showing up at all. This is one of the interesting problems and watch repair is everyone assumes that there are tech sheets parts lists and stuff out there and conceivably there are not which casually appears to be in the case of this watch

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Coincidentally, one of these arrived on my desk today. I haven't started disassembly, but the stem doesn't want to move or come out. Sounds like it's going to be interesting. 

[EdB]

On 12/3/2021 at 12:11 PM, TimpanogosSlim said:

Coincidentally, one of these arrived on my desk today. I haven't started disassembly, but the stem doesn't want to move or come out. Sounds like it's going to be interesting. 

The one I worked on was a bugger to get out as well. 

[EdB]

On 11/28/2021 at 5:00 PM, mikepilk said:

Here http://thewatchspotblog.com/?p=4176 it refers to the base calibre of the 560 RSS as a Bidlingmaier ebauche, with an added automatic winding mechanism. Not a company I've heard of.

I've tried to find additional information on this movement with no luck. I put the movement aside for awhile and recently getting back to it. Unfortunately while performing a complete takedown once again to refreshen the lubricant I small washer had appeared and can't seem to find where it belongs. I've checked the photos I had taken previously with no luck. The only place that makes any sense is atop of the gear assembly atop of the main barrel, as a spacer or a shim.