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Posted (edited)

I cleaned and lubed a Elgin ladies watch. She brought it back because the stem changes the time backwards compared to her other watches. On my watch, when I turn it towards my body or counter clockwise the hands go back. And when I turn it away from my body or clockwise the hands go forward.

Did I put something in wrong or is that just how older ladies Elgin watches work?

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Edited by diamondslayer
Posted

This is just how its designed, unless she was using the watch before and its now working differently?

I can't imagine how you could assemble a watch to have it wind in the opposite direction.

Off topic but I have installed a manual transmission only to find i had 1 forward and 4 reverse gears!

Anil

  • Like 1
Posted

edit..

 

I can't imagine how you could assemble a watch to have it wind  set in the opposite direction.

Posted (edited)

I was thinking the same thing as anilv, one of those unfortunate situations where the customer doesn't remember their watch perfectly so figures you did something wrong, I think. We could be wrong, but I can't imagine how you could reverse the direction.

Once had a similar issue where a lady said that her watch was now hard to change the time on, I looked it over and tested it out, she was right, but it was only that way by design, small, smooth crown with not much room to get a finger nail under to pull out, nothing we could have possibly done during the service, the keyless operated just fine, the stem and crown was awkward just by the way it had originally been made. She took some convincing. 

Edited by Ishima
Posted

edit..

 

I can't imagine how you could assemble a watch to have it wind  set in the opposite direction.

I would go further, it's impossible!

On your other subject "four reverse gears", was that so yo could go back to the future without using a flux capacitor? :)

  • Like 2
Posted

Yeah... that was on a VW bus/van... the transmission kept jumping out of 4th gear.. not fun when you're doing 50mph (laugh not..that was max!).

 

What I did was get a transmission from a breakers and install it. At that time I did not realise that there was a fundamental difference between transmission on beetles and busses in that there was an additional reduction gear at the end of the driveshaft (behind the driving wheel) and this required the driveshafts to spin in the opposite direction. This was in the BI era (before internet :D ).

 

Installation went fine and as the bus was parked nose up against the wall reverse was the first gear selected.. It went into gear fine and when the clutch was released it was quite a shock to find the bus going forwards. A bit of messing around with gear linkage and as everything looked ok we pushed the bus out and proceeded in first gear...the bus moved backwards...WTF?

 

A few days followed as I was convinced something was wrong with the way we hooked up the linkages... a lot of faffing around and getting intimate with the innards of the gearbox selectors (hockey sticks in volkspeak) comparing the old and new and nothing seemed amiss. One fine day one of my buddies decided to try second gear.. still backwards!! .. third and fourth...also the same. Mucho head scratching and back to the breakers we went. There the hairy breaker bloke (actually a skinny chinaman in string vest)  told us we had wanted a volkswagen transmission.. no one mentioned anything about a bus..didnt we know that they spin in different directions, You'll end up with 4 reverse and one forward gear!  yeahh right .. of course... well I actually need one for a bus.... be right back with the transmission..

 

Lesson learnt... just because it looks the same and will fit the same doesn't mean it is the same..!

 

Anil

  • Like 3
Posted

Yeah I can laugh about it now but way back then it was kind of depressing...sold it a short time later.

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