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Wittnauer Polara Halfway Working.

bsshog40
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bsshog40 Member

bsshog40

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Anyone know about these watches? It had 2 old 357 batteries in it so I replaced with the same. I can read and set the time, it shows the day but not the month. Would this be something in the movement? I can't really find any technical info on this thing.

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clockboy Distinguished Member

clockboy

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In the 1950's Longines purchased the Wittnauer company and I have searched the net but with no luck. You need to find its operation manual but it,s going to be a difficult search unless one of the forum members has a link. It's serial number might help.

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WillFly Distinguished Member

WillFly

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The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, although Wittnauer ran side by side with Longines for many years, they didn't share common factory tooling and machining. So Longines parts don't necessarily fit Wittnauer, and vice versa. It wasn't so much a purchase of the company as Wittnauer movements being made mainly for export to the US, where they were cased, and Longines being aimed more at the European market.

 

This is as I understand it - and the actual history of Wittnauer is a lot more complicated than that! So, to return to the thread topic, getting info on some of these watches is going to be very difficult.

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rogart63 Distinguished Member

rogart63

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Anyone know about these watches? It had 2 old 357 batteries in it so I replaced with the same. I can read and set the time, it shows the day but not the month. Would this be something in the movement? I can't really find any technical info on this thing.

attachicon.gif20150701_190412-1.jpg

There can be a spacer in the watch so the 357 batteries fit . From the beginning their where proberbly 386 as ro63rto said .

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bsshog40 Member

bsshog40

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I appreciate the responses guys. I took the entire movement out so I could clean the led screen and check it all out. There were no spacers to accommodate the 357 batteries. Not sure if 386 & 357 are basic same sizes. I could have sworn that I seen somewhere that the watch works like such:

Top right button: Press once for time, hold down for seconds. (Not getting the seconds)

Bottom left button: Press once for month and date. (Just getting date)

Yea, finding tech info is hard. No search results for owners manuals either.

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bsshog40 Member

bsshog40

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Well I went and bought some 386 batteries. These were too thin and did not make contact with the caps. So I had to put the 357's back in to make it work. I get time ok. I press both right and left buttons and get seconds. I still only get day for the month and day feature. I'm also wondering if maybe the year and month feature would have disappeared after 2000? Maybe the software in the module does not support it anymore. I went to Wittnauers site and sent them an email on it. They (Bulova), sent me a response asking for a picture. We'll see where this goes.

Thanks for the link ro63rto. I looked at all 3 hughes module settings and mine just doesn't seem to react like there instructions say it should. Lol I'm still thinking there may be a little kink in the module. Other than that, its been keeping perfect time since yesterday.

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bsshog40 Member

bsshog40

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This is one of the sites I found while searching today.http://www.timetrafficker.com/watches/led/wittnauer-polara-gold/index.html

It also states no month and 386 cells [emoji20]

I seen this site aldo. It's what got me to thinking about wrong batteries. But the 386 batteries seem to be a little too thin. The screwback caps seem to have to make contact with the batteries in order for it to work. They won't contact the 386 but make good contact with the 357. Odd! Lol
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Lawson Super WRT Addict

Lawson

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Just my 2 cents worth....

 

Did you "AC" the movement after replacing the batteries?

This is like rebooting a computer, and this is a MUST DO with some quartz movements in order for them to work correctly after a battery replacement.

 

Have a look on the back of the movement and see if there is AC stamped on the circuit cover plate next to an inspection hole with a contact point.  If there is, get your tweezers and "short out" this contact with a grounding point (normally the Cover Plate is the best grounding point). 

 

This will reset the quartz circuit and it should read "12:00" on the display.  Then check to see if all the functions are working.

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