Accruist Pulse Watch - Fishy Smell

[Waggy]

Hi there, you are going to think I lost my mind, but I found this Accurist 'Pulse' watch in a job lot of watches, the watch is/was running, but I'm not very knowledgeable on electronics, so need some help. I took the back off and there was a very strong smell of fish - any ideas, is this a sign of something, what do I need to do (if anything)?

Dial looks awesome under that beat up crystal!

[watchweasol]

Hi Waggy.  it could be the cct board, I have had some that smell a little but not as you would notice without getting your face close up.  May have been worn by a fisherman /merchant.

[Waggy]

And here is the finished watch

 

[RichardHarris123]

You could sell it "COD" hehe.  Has the smell gone? 

[Waggy]

Smell was inside, so all sealed in now. So I'll find out in a year or two as in think this is a keeper

[Neverenoughwatches]

4 minutes ago, RichardHarris123 said:

You could sell it "COD" hehe.  Has the smell gone? 

Cod be the circuit boards or the silcone Chips and that crystal is Battered, i smelt it when i was doing a load of them a couple of years ago, kind of an acidy leccy smell that i couldn't quite Plaice. Not strong but enough for you Tuna-notice. Anyways I'm sure Eel sort it Waggys not daft and if the circuits are Fried then a new movement should only be a few Squid. 

[RichardHarris123]

Did the smell Ling-er? Tight back use your mussels, if all else fails pawn it. 

PS.

I have broken my broach, it's now a  roach.

[watchweasol]

Hi Waggy  looks a Sole lot happier now.

[rehajm]

Waggy’s talents are no fluke!

[LittleWatchShop]

That watch appears to be the same concept as Seiko Kinetic.  If so, you may need to replace the capacitor (the thing that looks like a battery).  I have serviced several.  The caps go bad eventually.

3 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

silcone Chips

Chips are not made of "silicone" but rather "silicon."  Silicon does not smell.

[mbwatch]

I've wondered about this. Among the quartz watches I have opened, some of the most tightly sealed screw backs smelled strongly of rotting potato or vegetation inside. And not old ones either, Citizen or Casio in clean condition just getting their first battery change after 3 or 4 years.

The fact that you didn't all reply to the op that "oh yeah quartz watches usually stink" means I have to keep wondering.

[JohnR725]

4 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

That watch appears to be the same concept as Seiko Kinetic.  If so, you may need to replace the capacitor (the thing that looks like a battery).  I have serviced several.  The caps go bad eventually.

Yes it definitely looks like a Seiko kinetic sort of. The yes all the capacitors went bad and as far as I know them all of the kinetic I would replaced with rechargeable lithium batteries. Even though in the stores they will tell you that the replacing your capacitor that as far as I know the capacitors are all no longer in existence

 

 

[Waggy]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

I would replaced with rechargeable lithium batteries.

Hi there, yes the watch will tick for a while when being worn, but will die shortly after taking off. Could you help with the spec of the rechargeable lithium battery, I'll pull the capacitor tonight and post pictures.

6 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

That watch appears to be the same concept as Seiko Kinetic. 

Seems to be, the rotor seems to charge up the battery/capacitor, all is working, but I think the battery/capacitor cannot hold more than a few minutes of charge and I will have to replace it.

52 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Could you help with the spec of the rechargeable lithium battery, I'll pull the capacitor tonight and post pictures.

I think I managed to figure it out, the movement is a Mayota BP10 - from my googoo search I found a site that calls out a Citizen 295-6000 capacitor as the replacement. Just placed on order on eBay, CousinsUK won't post to me in my location as it's classed as dangerous goods

10 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Cod be the circuit boards or the silcone Chips and that crystal is Battered, i smelt it when i was doing a load of them a couple of years ago, kind of an acidy leccy smell that i couldn't quite Plaice. Not strong but enough for you Tuna-notice. Anyways I'm sure Eel sort it Waggys not daft and if the circuits are Fried then a new movement should only be a few Squid. 

Oh my, you put a lot of effort into this 

I also managed to find this on a Raspberry Pi site (LINK), it states that a bad capacitor can leak its fluid and smells fishy, this jives with the watch being unable to hold a charge.... cue the fish pie jokes! 

 

Edited November 29, 2023 by Waggy

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, Waggy said:

Hi there, yes the watch will tick for a while when being worn, but will die shortly after taking off. Could you help with the spec of the rechargeable lithium battery, I'll pull the capacitor tonight and post pictures.

 

5 hours ago, Waggy said:

I think I managed to figure it out, the movement is a Mayota BP10 - from my googoo search I found a site that calls out a Citizen 295-6000 capacitor as the replacement. Just placed on order on eBay, CousinsUK won't post to me in my location as it's classed as dangerous goods

I see you found the replacement battery when I was looking online I was hoping for a technical sheet but they don't seem to exist I did find a couple of people including one on eBay would sell a replacement movement. Then several people of course did have the replacement battery

I was kinda surprised that this existed because I only thought that Seiko and the Swiss had a kinetic type watch. I always thought citizen was big on solar power and left kinetic the Seiko.

Then just as a reminder this is a quartz mechanical watch like any mechanical watch from time to time they may need servicing. Typically the kinetic watches represent minor service issues in that they use a lot of plastic including the Seiko watches. So cleaning fluids become more interesting so is not disintegrate the plastic. So any time you a quartz movement out you want to be very careful to make sure that there's no dust or dirt or anything to deserve very intolerant to anything versus the mechanical watch

then the save some time to explain some things I've attached a Seiko technical bulletin. This one is interesting because they acknowledge that it has a  battery versus a capacitor. It does have some rather dramatic changes to things

so your watch doesn't have something that Seiko kinetic's have which is the button to tell what your power reserve is.

You look on the second page of the PDF will see the interesting problem although since you haven't seen the tech sheet for a capacitor version it's not as obvious. First off we start off with how to wind up your watch you want to have a specific rhythmic motion to get the rotor spinning because only if it spins can it generate electricity to charge up the capacitor/battery. What becomes interesting with a battery in a kinetic versus the capacitor is it requires way way more charging. So notice it says it takes 250 swings to get it to charge up for one day of use. Or approximately 500 swings to get two days of use.

You'll notice they make reference to something that typically people tried a DIY this with a variety of things. Seiko had a charging station plugs in has a power adapter power the thing it would place the watch at various positions depending upon which model you have it had a timer for how long it ran and images charge the thing up and you wouldn't have to swing it perpetually but when it was available it used to cost $250. But still it's really nice to have if you have a kinetic watch and if you could find one otherwise you will have the do an online search and see people a bad varying degrees of luck with DIY but because you don't have the push button to see how the charging is going then you're not know how well that works

now reason I'm pointing out all of this how much swinging you have to do if you're only getting a few minutes of run time and providing the watch doesn't need to be serviced you need to really shake the watch a lot more and do it rhythmically is kind of a rhythmic procedure for that. Yes the benefits of things you learn by taking classes including a class on kinetic watches. She work up a nice rhythmic motion and see if you get a little more run time Perhaps

 

 

Seiko kinetic 5M54A.pdf

[Neverenoughwatches]

6 hours ago, Waggy said:

also managed to find this on a Raspberry Pi site (LINK), it states that a bad capacitor can leak its fluid and smells fishy, this jives with the watch being unable to hold a charge.... cue the fish pie jokes! 

Haha it was short lived, some folk lack my humour, well any humour really

[LittleWatchShop]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

You'll notice they make reference to something that typically people tried a DIY this with a variety of things. Seiko had a charging station plugs in has a power adapter power the thing it would place the watch at various positions depending upon which model you have it had a timer for how long it ran and images charge the thing up and you wouldn't have to swing it perpetually but when it was available it used to cost $250.

The Kinetic caps/batteries I bought came fully charged. This I suspect they were batteries. Moreover, the seemed to run a REALLY long time in a static position...also indicating battery.

[JohnR725]

1 minute ago, LittleWatchShop said:

The Kinetic caps/batteries I bought came fully charged. This I suspect they were batteries. Moreover, the seemed to run a REALLY long time in a static position...also indicating battery.

If you looked at the tech sheet that I supplied up above a look carefully somewhere it says the following

Marking on the battery: maxell TC920

I find things like this interesting because normally you have to look really carefully at the battery to see if you can spot the number and here in the tech sheet they tell you that. Then once you get the number you can either search online or the fastest way for me was the search of the computer because I Suspected correctly that the tech sheet was lurking in the computer.

TC920S_DataSheet_16e li battery.pdf

[LittleWatchShop]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

Marking on the battery: maxell TC920

Yup, you nailed it.  Here is the last one I bought which comports with your data.

[HectorLooi]

I think most of us don't move enough to keep the battery sufficiently charged. I inherited my father's Seiko AGS, which uses a gold film capacitor instead of a rechargeable battery. It takes a lot of shaking to charge the watch sufficiently for a day's life.

I discovered that some non-contact electric toothbrush chargers could be used to charge kinetic watches. The position of the charging coil should be noted and the charger placed as close as possible to the coil. 

Without my homemade charger, I think the kinetic watch is just not practical. Even when the watch was new, I remembered seeing my father doing the Seiko wave while watching tv every night. He finally gave up on it after Seiko changed a new pcb, claiming that the charging circuit was spoilt. And it was still not charging properly.

[JohnR725]

51 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

I think the kinetic watch is just not practical.

At least was Seiko yet the button to push to give you a clue if you are successful with your hand motion or with whatever charging device you had. I find it's an interesting idea a mechanical watch charging a bad return run a quartz watch. But like any automatic watch especially today how much motion you actually have especially if you worked at a day job keeping the watch wound up is always going to be an issue.

As always an amusing conversation in a watch shop after servicing an automatic watch. We have to explain the customer who came back because the watch still is it running that there probably not active enough to keep it running and maybe they should get an auto winder to keep it wound up at night when they're not wearing it. Where is the auto winder is probably the only thing keeping the watch wound up at all as are just not moving their arms enough or in the right movement to keep the mechanical watch wound up.

Then while searching for something on the computer related to the kinetic stumble across an interesting PDF of website. Always nice to PDF for copy websites really like if you can because you never know if they will last and they have a habit of disappearing but this one has not. So here's a rather interesting website that talks about the kinetic watches good bad and whatever

https://www.quartzimodo.com/the-seiko-kinetic-boon-or-bane/

 

[LittleWatchShop]

6 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

And it was still not charging properly.

Replace the cap. As noted earlier, the replacements are lithium batteries.

[HectorLooi]

The earlier models can't take a lithium battery as there isn't a charge controller in the circuit. Putting a lithium battery in place of a cap is what kills the pcb.

[JohnR725]

12 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

The earlier models can't take a lithium battery as there isn't a charge controller in the circuit. Putting a lithium battery in place of a cap is what kills the pcb.

Because I'm having a confusion exactly which model are you thinking of?

[HectorLooi]

 

48 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

Because I'm having a confusion exactly which model are you thinking of?

This is one of Seiko's early kinetic watches. It was designed to use a gold capacitor, so having a charge controller wasn't necessary.

[JohnR725]

Okay we got a number 7M22

My confusion was is looking at some of the supplemental information and one of the early watches did have a circuit upgrade but it doesn't appear to relate to lithium batteries. Then the lithium battery upgrades all have like in the image way up above different strap to hold them down but do not appear to require any circuit modification.

What's interesting about the above image is the first capacitor is discontinued and you to replace it with the other number then right underneath is another capacitor which has not been discontinued except that of course is not a capacitor.

I'm attaching any other document battery cross reference guide. Notice it also has timing specifications for mechanical watches which is interesting along with the technical specs for the quartz watches.

In other words more than a battery guide At the bottom of PDF page 28 is a reference to the original capacitor for this watch have the upgrade capacitor which is really a lithium battery.

 

 

Seiko 7M22A.pdf Seiko 7M_Series-1 supplemental document.pdf Seiko and others Battery Chart as of March 2014 with mechanical watch timing specifications.pdf