What causes unacceptable time loss as PR goes down even a little?

[DaveInLA]

Hello folks. I’m just a watch fan, no experience servicing any watches but haven’t been able to figure this out on other forums. 

I have a 45 year old Seiko 6306 diver that needed service so took it to a local shop that was recommended on a Seiko forum. When I got the watch back, it kept very good time on the wrisr but lost substantial time when when worn. And as PR dwindled, the time loss got a lot worse. For ex, after a full work day wearing it, it lost 2 seconds. If I left it on the table overnight, it would be -20. When I came back home from work, it would be -60. The next morning, -100. This was regardless of position when resting. I asked around the forums and apparently this movement has a known problem of some parts wearing out (surrounding mainspring barrel) so I attributed it to that. I blamed the watch and not the service . 

I also have  a Tudor Pelagos that’s 10 years old with a lightly modified ETA 2824 movement (Top grade, I read somewhere). Just the regulator and shock system. For convenience. I had the same guy service it as it’s a basic movement that he said he was very familiar with. He immediately recognized the modified regulator. After 5 weeks, I got it back and it has the same problem, just less dramatic. Before service; the watch kept excellent time on or off wrist +2 s/day. The reason I serviced it is because PR had dropped to 20 hrs or so so has to be worn daily (again, excellent time). But I like to wear different watches and it couldn’t go 1 day without wearing so I had it serviced. I rarely wore it since buying it new 2012 so I figured the lubricants dried. Due to minimal wear; I know the parts should still be without wear. 
 

Right now, the Tudor loses about 1 s/hr when fully wound and on my wrist. When I leave it on the desk overnight, it’ll lose almost 2 s/hr. This is consistent across 3 positions I tried. If I let PR go down further (still <24h off wrist), it’ll lose time at an even faster rate. Again, this watch was rarely with so parts should be OK. This is now 2 watches that are losing time way too fast when not worn, so can’t just speed it up with regulation. There’s a trend so I suspect the service person now.
 

In general, what can cause accelerated time loss even just a few hours into the PR? Thanks 

[clockboy]

Welcome to the forum, enjoy 

[watchweasol]

Hi. May be significant that both watches serviced by the same guy exhibit the same fault, the Tudor was ok beforehand and poor afterwards. It might be worth discussing with the repairer what he did, cleaning oiling,  mainspring change, lubricants used, was pallet fork lubricated, in an effort to pin point the problem. And get them checked on a timegrapher.

[JohnR725]

15 hours ago, DaveInLA said:

apparently this movement has a known problem of some parts wearing out (surrounding mainspring barrel)

actually a lot of the Seiko watches have problems with that. Depending upon the watch some of those problems can be fixed.

15 hours ago, DaveInLA said:

45 year old Seiko 6306 diver

One of the problems we have with watch companies are how long did they expect us to keep their watch? Then it would be really nice if you could give us a picture of this watch as I believe that's a Japanese model.

26 minutes ago, watchweasol said:

timegrapher.

One of the unfortunate problems with the watch is it sealed up and we can't really see what's going on unless we have a timing machine. Otherwise we get to speculate on what the problems are.

15 hours ago, DaveInLA said:

so can’t just speed it up with regulation.

Speed up with regulation you'd have to have the back off? Ideally should have a timing machine and moving the regulator isn't necessarily in your best interest if there's other problems going on. Plus if you don't know what you're doing in other words is more than just moving the regulator you can end up with Worse problems.

15 hours ago, DaveInLA said:

In general, what can cause accelerated time loss even just a few hours into the PR?

Without a timing machine that we get to speculate and I love to speculate like?

38 minutes ago, watchweasol said:

May be significant that both watches serviced by the same guy exhibit the same fault, the Tudor was ok beforehand and poor afterwards. It might be worth discussing with the repairer what he did, cleaning oiling,  mainspring change, lubricants used, was pallet fork lubricated, in an effort to pin point the problem. And get them checked on a timegrapher.

Those are all good points and of course the timing machine

one of the problems that happens with some watchmakers are they do not expect a customer to be overly concerned about what they did to the watch or its timekeeping. Some watchmakers are still working with vintage timing machines they don't necessarily checked the watch in more than one position. Or they don't check the timekeeping after 24 hours or just a whole variety of things because they typically don't have customers that are overly concerned about things.

Then

15 hours ago, DaveInLA said:

ETA 2824 movement (Top grade,

A plane 2824 or 2824 – 2? I'm going to assume it's the newer one because I want to look up timing specifications. No idea how much modifications were done to the watch but the timing specifications should be very very close. So we have the top grade and the chronometer grade. The middle rate is basically where the regulator should be placed. Usually what they do is put it in the middle of the range of what they expect the watch to do. Although I knew someone who worked at Swatch group and rather than setting the watch to the middle rate all they had to do was to hit the window of the rate so in this case the middle is for its between zero and eight seconds fast today all they had to do was hit that window.

The isochronism is the interesting one for us basically between fully wound up in 24 hours in the CH position which is Considered dial up. So in other words you can wind your watch up a set at the time and providing you have a time source that you're comparing to that keeps better time than the watch. That often leads to customer confusion of using time sources that are less accurate than the watch. But in a case dial-up after 24 hours you should be within + or -10 seconds per day of your time.

We have too much to speculate on without seeing the watch we can give you all kinds of reasons but too many things the speculate on. Other than often times watchmakers aren't obsessed with perfect timekeeping unless that is what they're trained to do. I've been in a lecture where is explained how a Rolexes serviced and the quality control they go through afterwords of on the timing machine on the auto winder running it with out being on the auto winder running at over a period of time often times watchmakers put her on the timing machine regulated to some time and that's good enough and to check all the rest of the stuff. That's because they perceive their only their service the watch not to make sure it keeps precision time either because they don't think about it or because they just don't do it.

 

 

[Nucejoe]

Welcome.

[RichardHarris123]

Hello and welcome.