Fast Running 7s26a

[Scottie]

Hi Guys,

I wonder if someone could give a little give me a little advice or point me in the right direction, I have just purchased an ebay special, seiko 5 with a 7s26a movement. On first sight it all looked ok, bit dirty but other than that ok....or so I thought. This is my first watch to have a go at servicing... so wish me luck

Anyway  I thought I'd gather as much info on the thing before diving in also collect some tools.

I did a basic timing check against a stop watch and OMG this thing is running super fast, basically it did a minute in about 32 seconds!!!!! On doing some more reading it would seem that the problem I have lies within the balance wheel/hair spring? (Thoughts please) am I correct or could the problem lie else were within the movement??

I hope I have made sense with the above, I haven't opened the thing up yet just wanted as much info as I can get before I dive in..

Cheers

Scott...

[Nucejoe]

18 minutes ago, Scottie said:

I did a basic timing check against a stop watch and OMG this thing is running super fast, basically it did a minute in about 32 seconds!!!!! 

Right ,  running fast is a hairspring issue, wrong or too short  hairspring, coil fouling itself, sticking so on.

In case your not sure the balance is a 7s26a, show us a close up of the oscilator .

Good luck.

[Scottie]

Ah cool, so looks like I might be in the right area then, result 

Cheers for that Nucejoe, I'll get some pic's when I have it apart and post them, lets see where the problem lies

Scott...

[Neverenoughwatches]

5 hours ago, Scottie said:

Hi Guys,

I wonder if someone could give a little give me a little advice or point me in the right direction, I have just purchased an ebay special, seiko 5 with a 7s26a movement. On first sight it all looked ok, bit dirty but other than that ok....or so I thought. This is my first watch to have a go at servicing... so wish me luck

Anyway  I thought I'd gather as much info on the thing before diving in also collect some tools.

I did a basic timing check against a stop watch and OMG this thing is running super fast, basically it did a minute in about 32 seconds!!!!! On doing some more reading it would seem that the problem I have lies within the balance wheel/hair spring? (Thoughts please) am I correct or could the problem lie else were within the movement??

I hope I have made sense with the above, I haven't opened the thing up yet just wanted as much info as I can get before I dive in..

Cheers

Scott...

Likely a magnetised or oily sticky hairspring. Post a close up picture of the hairspring matey. 

[Nucejoe]

 A close up vid of the oscilator when running be great, show the coil from top view looking streight down and a side view of the coil when running. 

Running this fast is somewhat unusual though, we,ll work with you every step of the way. 

Rgds

[Scottie]

[Scottie]

Managed to get a shot of the balance wheel from the top, OMG!! the hair spring is not even moving, I take it that this means it's probably tangled in the centre of the spring?? I'll upload another from the side next..... 

..... And from the side....

Cheers

Scott...

[JohnR725]

28 minutes ago, Scottie said:

OMG!! the hair spring is not even moving,

Yes that's an extremely weird video as they hairspring is not moving at all. Which is basically normally impossible. And the easiest way to figure out what's going on would be to take the balance bridge off and see what happens. Normally I'm a big believer of leaving the balance in to make tweaking on the hairspring etc. but I think we actually need to get the balance wheel out to see how things look. Then another video I can't really see what I need to see for one thing the video I think is upside down as screwing with my brain right now.

[Scottie]

Ha Ha, you think its screwing up your brain!! This is the first watch I have ever pulled apart and I cannot get around how small everything is!! I'm used to screwing big things together, you watch a few vids read a few walk throughs and the pictures look normal but when your actually doing it is Sooooo small!!

I'll pull the balance out tonight and get a couple of pics and report back, thanks for taking a look

Cheers

Scott..

[JohnR725]

13 minutes ago, Scottie said:

This is the first watch I have ever pulled apart

Normally in fields other than watch repair people like to practice on something disposable first. Or something bigger like a 6497 clone relatively cheap off eBay. But how hard could watch repair be?

15 minutes ago, Scottie said:

you watch a few vids read a few walk throughs and the pictures look normal but when your actually doing it is Sooooo small!!

Yes others have noticed that the videos make watch repair looks so the simple or so fast. Somebody recommended a video for me to watch to evaluate so I won't say what and it just so fun and fast and so the person skipped over a whole bunch of steps. But the person had a huge following whole bunch a likes on the video and was probably making money. The videos are not necessarily a true representation and as an added bonus just because you do a YouTube video doesn't mean you actually know what you're doing.

Oh and it's not just YouTube videos on watch repair. I've seen YouTube product reviews like a CNC milling machine I purchased where the one that was reviewed versus the one that I got was a little bit different but you always expect that with Chinese stuff. But the person reviewing it made everything like to watch repair videos looks so a simple the first time you did something it worked. As why like some of the YouTube tells I watch for the show the bloopers of whatever were at least I'll tell you took them 10 tries to get this right versus everything looks perfect. I've even tried to convince somebody with YouTube channel to show a video of these of the watches I can't fix but they won't because that doesn't look fun and exciting. So yes watches are really tiny and it takes practice to do things and unfortunately practicing on live patients doesn't always have the desired outcome but who knows we won't know until you try just be careful when you take the balance wheel out not the stretcher break the hairspring anymore than it already is. You also want to look in preferably with a loop carefully between the balance wheel hairspring and see what you seek is angle for your video isn't right you might see something that I can't to the video.

[Scottie]

 Thankyou for the advice, you are right these youtube vids are as I like to say.. very shiny but not a true representation, but hey they got me interested so not all bad, I am going very slowly with this watch it wasn't super expensive but not silly cheap either I have to be carful what I do here as I would still like to use the watch and also learn.

I might look for a larger pocket watch next time as the movements seem a little bigger, better for my sausage fingers!! lol

Cheers

Scott..

 

[watchweasol]

Hi Looking at the Video and the fact that the outer coils are not moving, definitley a balance spring problem, coils in the center stuck either magnetised or gummed up. I have attached a tech sheet/Guide of the 7s26 to give you an idea of its anatomy and a guide, hope you find it useful.   cheers

917_seiko 7s26c, 7s36c.pdf

[Nucejoe]

 John's eyesight is usually better than mine. 

You might not need to remove the balance & cock assembly, as its  the  outer coil that seems to be sticking, if so use a clean needle or oiler to seperate the two sticking coils, plenty of space there right after the bend of terminal curve for the needle.  

Good luck

 

 

 

 

[Scottie]

1 hour ago, watchweasol said:

Hi Looking at the Video and the fact that the outer coils are not moving, definitley a balance spring problem, coils in the center stuck either magnetised or gummed up. I have attached a tech sheet/Guide of the 7s26 to give you an idea of its anatomy and a guide, hope you find it useful.   cheers

917_seiko 7s26c, 7s36c.pdf 1.52 MB · 0 downloads

Thankyou for that, I did have a PDF for the movement but not as detailed as this one, thanks again

Scott..

[Neverenoughwatches]

7 hours ago, Scottie said:

Managed to get a shot of the balance wheel from the top, OMG!! the hair spring is not even moving, I take it that this means it's probably tangled in the centre of the spring?? I'll upload another from the side next..... 

..... And from the side....

Cheers

Scott...

There must be some oscillation going on that we cant see, otherwise the balance wheel would come to a halt. The outer coils do look stuck together,  bottom of your video. As john says the balance needs to come out and flipped on its back to get a good view of how it looks .

[JohnR725]

8 hours ago, Scottie said:

I would still like to use the watch and also learn

No problem using this watch To learn with ill work just fine.

Then this is the clone of the Swiss watch notice it comes with a variety of different numbers and a whole bunch of different finishes styles. You look on eBay basically for one of the numbers and you should find a lot of movements Available

https://calibercorner.com/seagull-caliber-st3600k/