1976 Citizen Crystron Solar

[Poohs]

Hi,

I have a 1976 Citizen Crystron Solar anaglue quartz watch which I bought when I was 16 years old (44 years ago).  It developed a mechanical fault when it was about 10 years old where the second hand would randomly "stick", flicking regularly at 1 second intervals, and then resume its sweep.  After a while, the second hand stuck and flicked but never swept anymore.

I put the watch away and forgot about.  When I found it about 20 years later, I put a new battery in it but it did absolutely nothing so I removed the battery and put it away again.

Recently I came across it again and decided to have another tinker with it.  I have managed to get the electronic part of the watch working well again but the mechanical fault remains.  Inspecting the mechanism around the stepper motor I can see at least one of the gears in the train shows wear, so I am expecting a new gear or gears will be required to make a full repair.  Problem is, finding spares for this age of Citizen watches seems to be a well know issue when searching through the internet.

Any pointers where I might find spares ?  I thought of a donor watch but this model of watch appears to be rare, and the only ones I can find for sale are working, and expensive.

I have read that the calibre (8620A) shares some common components with other calibres, but I cant find anything about which calibres these might be.  Does anybody have any info ?

Thanks for your attention and any info you may have.

[Nucejoe]

Check this, a new movement is often the best option.

https://mehima-singh.com/product/seiko-movement-8620a/

 

[jdm]

7 hours ago, Poohs said:

I have read that the calibre (8620A) shares some common components with other calibres, 

Please post a good picture of your mov.t. to identify what you have. Be reassured however that chances of finding spare parts for Japanese vintage quartz watches are next to zero, so if you want your watch repaired a donor watch may be the one and only option.

 

7 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

https://mehima-singh.com/product/seiko-movement-8620a/

Let's see what the OP actually has before assuming that he needs a Seiko mov.t for his Citizen watch.

[Poohs]

Hi guys,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Firstly, I am very much new to watch tinkering so appologies if I'm not following the reference to "Seiko mov.t" - the movement in my watch is very much a Citizen movement, it is stamped with Citizen and the number 8620A.

I dont have a way of taking a good quality photo of my movement (I've tried my phone camera but the quality is very poor) so I've attached a photo from the internet which is exactly the same as my movement.

Cheers.

[Plato]

The module could just do with a service... a strip down, clean and fresh oil. Even though it's a quartz, it has mechanical moving parts. 

[watchweasol]

 Citizen 86XXmanual covers  the watch with exploded view.  Jules Borel in the USA  has a parts listing in their database

8625.pdf

[Nucejoe]

2 hours ago, jdm said:

Please post a good picture of your mov.t. to identify what you have. Be reassured however that chances of finding spare parts for Japanase vintage quartz watches are next to zero, so if you want your watch repaired a donor watch may be the one and only option.

 

Let's see what the OP actually has before assuming that he needs a Seiko mov.t for his Citizen watch.

I goofed up, gave the link to Seiko 8620a, OP needs a citizen 8620a. 

 

[Poohs]

Hello again,

Thanks to all who took the time to respond.

To Plato: I was waiting to see if parts where available before I started dissassembling the movement because I'm pretty sure with a loupe I can see wear on at least one of the gears, however if no spares can be found I've nothing to lose, thanks.

Nucejoe: no worries, just glad it wasnt me not understanding.

watchweasol: many thanks for the manual.  When I open the pdf file, although the front page states it covers the 86xx calibres, on the Specifications page it only covers the 8625A, 26A and 27A calibres, and the diagrams in the manual show a diifferent design to my 8620A, however I can get a good understanding of how the various gear trains work together in this type of watch so I am very grateful for you posting this.

I guess having taken over 30 years to get this far, I cant be in any rush so I'll continue to scan the internet and secondhand shops, etc for a donor watch, and being ever the optimist, hope I may happen upon some NOS parts one day.

I will continue to monitor my topic, so if anybody stumbles across it and has anything else they think might help me, I will be very pleased to hear from them.

Thanks again.

[Poohs]

Hi again,

If anybody is still following this thread, or somebody has stumbled across it in search of info / help on the Citizen Solar Crystron watch and /or the associated 8620A movement, then the following may be useful :

Bottom line is the watch is now working !

I cant say exactly what the problem was but a strip down, clean and oiling has returned it to full working order.  There was a fair amount of obvious contamination throughout plus small areas of corrosion from being stored with the case open for all those years.  Presumably what wasnt obvious to a tinkerer like me was dried up oil in the mechanism.

The "wear" I thought I could see on the gear that is driven by the rotor wasnt, it's that this gear is almost conical in shape top to bottom so without dismantling, it appeared to be worn at the top.  During dissassembly, when the rotor was removed and inspected it was quite dirty including underneath so this may have been why the second hand would move on occasions but then "stick" at random.

I was very lucky to contact a company in the Netherlands called SpareParts-Watches asking if they had any spares for the 8620A movement (before I had dismantled it and incase I needed spares), which they hadnt BUT a very helpful guy called Peter offered to send me diagrams and parts lists that covered the movement !  These were incredibly useful.

Finally, once the watch was working again I needed to replace the screws that hold down the battery strap as one was missing and the other's head broken in half.  I did manage to find some NOS on the internet but they were in Australia and with charges for shipping etc, would have cost me a small fortune !  However, armed with the parts list from Peter, I stumbled across a watch on eBay being sold for parts that had a 8640 movement which shares a high percentage of parts to then 8620A.  This was in the USA but even with shipping, was better value than just the screws.  As all I needed was the two screws, I now have a lot of spares for my watch in case of future need.

If anybody would like to see the diagrams / parts list, just let me know.  If you're looking for spares for this series of movements, message me and I'll try to help.

If you havent gathered by now, I'm rather pleased that my nearly 50 year old watch is runnng again !

Thanks to all who offered suggestions - Plato you were right, a strip/clean/oil was all that was required !

[watchweasol]

Glad to hear that its up and running The dried oil was as you said due to no back and being in a drawer open So many watches suffer from dirt and oil prolems a good clean usually cures the problem.  well done.  As regards the diagrams/parts list and also  the "spare-parts watches " Url , It would be nice to post and  share with other members .  A sucessful end well done

[Poohs]

URL for SpareParts-Watches : https://www.spareparts-watches.com/

Parts lists and diagrams:

 

[watchweasol]

Thank you for the details, I am sure some members will find them use ful.