Rolex Gmt

[CKelly]

Hi All,

    I just started a weeks vacation today. Dropped off a watch that I had to replace a crystal and picked up this one. The owner of the pawn shop who owns the watch said he picked it up as water damaged and he thought it needed another movement. It was missing the balance but someone had ordered a new one and I have that. Obviously someone started work on it and either gave up or could not get all the parts needed. The stem is broken, crown won't screw down, balance had been removed, jewel is missing from the pallet fork and automatic driving wheel is worn out. I tried to get a close picture to show the pallet fork but it didn't work out as well as I wanted. I left most of the movement in the case waiting until the parts I've ordered arrive. It's just hard for me to understand how so many things could have gone wrong all at once. I'm starting to think that the automatic drive wheel went bad and the former owner got cheap and just manually wound the watch, then the crown threads wore out which allowed water to enter the case. You may not see a lot of water damage but there is some staining. I also have a small box with some rusty wheels that were replaced by someone that came with the watch. Anyway thought some of you might want to take a look.

 

Charles K 

[anilv]

very nice, you'll end up with a beauty!

[Geo]

I agree with Anil, and look forward to seeing the finished item and a few photos along the way!

[clockboy]

It will be worth it when finished I owned a GMT for many years a really great watch. The problem you will have is sourcing parts & their cost.The cost of the complete balance & finding one will be very difficult.

Another issue is I don,t think the extra hour hand is not correct. Normally they are a different colour to the regular hands & the bezels are normally (not always ) split into two separate colour zones.

Someone has robbed it for parts or attempted to fix it & lost the parts.

[CKelly]

Hi,

   Parts so far haven't been very difficult. The watch came with a balance complete and bridge. They were inside a sealed packet inside a tin, good thing as the price of replacement parts looked to be around $600. There were also some broken parts in another container, a bent hairspring and one and a half stems. I have already ordered what I know I need except for the crown. When I picked up the watch It had the balance removed but was otherwise intact. When I held up the watch to look at it the weight of the second hand caused it to move forward about 15 seconds. That's when I knew that either the sweep pinion or pallet fork was broken. I'm still wondering if gravity and the weight of the second hand is enough to cause the drive train to move unless something else is broken however when you hold up the watch and look all the wheels move a bit as long as the pallet fork is unlocked. A puff of air on the escapement wheel will also move things along easily. 

   I agree with clockboy in that I think someone has tried to repair this watch and ran into some trouble. If you notice there are some pretty ugly scratches on the ratchet wheel and along the edge of it as well, also the case screw you see that is removed was not positioned properly in the slot of the case. I'm also wondering if someone was attempting to turn it into a two-tone model. It has a jubilee band and I thought this model always had the oyster.

   Anyway I was looking for a project and it seems I found one.

Edited September 1, 2015 by CKelly

[anilv]

From what I can recall, if the hands are gold plated, the 24hr hand will be gold plated as well but the shaft of main part of the hand will usually be green instead of red. You do see some with the whole hand plated gold but I'm not sure if this is aftermarket or just the green paint removed.

 

Isnt this a two tone model? crown and bezel seem gold strap is half gold from what I can see.... rolex made a lot of variations..

 

If you google the model number you can see how it should look like. The model number is between on set of lugs (top set I think), the number in between the other set of lugs is the serial number.

 

Anil

Edited September 2, 2015 by anilv

[CKelly]

HI,

  Yes I did a search on the model number yesterday and it is supposed to be a two-tone watch. As for the hands I don't know. The watch was from 1991 so the hands could have been replaced years ago. I have seen some replacement sets that look the same as what's on the watch. I just checked the tracking numbers on the pallet fork and stem and they have been shipped so maybe by this weekend I can give it a try and hope I don't need anything else, other than the crown. I'm a little concerned about the jewel the automatic driving wheel fits in next to the ratchet wheel. It appears to be pretty loose but I can't see any cracks so maybe it's supposed to be like that.

   I have been searching for a crown online and found several. The one that's on the case now is 6mm and I have found a few that should work. I'm going until I get the watch running smoothly before I order one, unless I find a great deal. 

[CKelly]

Hi,

   I thought I might update you all as to how the Rolex is going. According to tracking numbers the parts I ordered should be here tomorrow. To prep myself I have watched Marks videos on the 3135 service twice now. I had put the watch away waiting on the parts to arrive before I did anything else but the scoring around the ratchet wheel kept playing on my mind. What would cause such a thing? Anyway tonight the puzzle got the best of me and I took off the ratchet wheel to see what was going on. This is when I had a what the heck is going on moment. I found that the part of the barrel arbor that the ratchet wheel screws onto was missing one of it's sides. Basically the square part was three sided and the ratchet wheel wobbled. I guess this wobble could have caused the damage I earlier found on the automatic driving wheel. At this point I just had to look at the other side of the barrel to be sure a jewel wasn't cracked. The jewel was fine but the pivot that fits into that jewel was not round. If you look at it straight on it looks someone took a file to one side. Looking at the scoring the watch must have ran like this for some time.  Looks like I now need to order a barrel arbor.

[Geo]

The plot thickens!

It always pays to completely strip the movement to make sure you know exactly what you require. I have too have learned the hard way.

[clockboy]

Agree with Geo when stripping a watch I now always check & double check the parts as I go.

This Rolex has been in the hands of a very poor repairer destroying a really great quality watch movement. 

[CKelly]

Hi,

   Yes I agree about stripping the watch. In this case I did want to watch the videos again before I got in too deep and ran into some surprise. I have worked on Omegas, Tags, many different chronographs, vulcain jump hours, really worked on many different assorted watches, and have done several repairs to different Rolexes but this is the first Gmt and the first Rolex calling for such an extensive repair. When I opened the case and found so much wrong I slowed down and just wanted to double check all I knew about the watch before going to much farther. I could see screws missing, one is missing on the winding bridge. You could tell that the watch had been badly handled and I just wanted to become very familiar with what it was supposed to look like. I do have a question about the videos while I'm thinking about it. While watching the reassembly I saw Mark put in the pallet fork and did not see him put any oil on the stones or escapement.I watched videos twice and the last time I replayed that part in case I missed something. I saw him oil everything else but here it wasn't shown. Now I'm looking at specs to see if Rolex has some special way of oiling this area that I don't know about.

Thanks,

Charles K   

Edited September 5, 2015 by CKelly

[CKelly]

Hi,

   Well the parts didn't show up today, so much for a project to do on my vacation. Anyway I decided to go ahead and strip the watch and get it as ready for the new parts as I could so when they arrived all I would have to do is install. Also would allow me to inspect the rest of the watch to see if anything else was needed. I took a picture with the dial off just to show you all the condition it's in. I went by the shop I got it from today just to ask about it's history some. I was told that the previous owner had taken it to be repaired but the person who was supposed to do the work was not capable. I think that comment was very kind. In the other pictures I posted you can see some of the damage. After I took off the dial the first thing I saw was the date could not change because the date ring was wedged on top of the jumper. After I took off the calendar platform things looked a bit better. Things do look pretty rough in the picture I'm posting today. If you look close you may be able to see what I was talking about when I was trying to describe damage to the barrel arbor. 

    I started thinking though about what the next person who may work on the watch will think. I may be able to clean up some of the mess but I would be ashamed to think someone might think I would do something like this. I think this is one of the reasons I take before pictures so I can document what things looked like to begin with. Originally I took pictures just to refresh my memory on watches I worked on.

[anilv]

Just do the best you can and don't sweat it...this will be hidden by the dial..as long as it functions properly is all that matters.

I always think that when it comes to Rolex, its mostly about the oyster case. The movements are tough but its the case that makes it a Rolex.

Just let the next owner know (if you decide to sell it later) what happened and let him decide if he still wants it.

Personally I think you caught it just in time, a few more parts salvaged from this and it would be beyond economic repair.

Anilv

[CKelly]

I think it will clean up pretty well. So far I have been able to locate all the parts I need at a fairly reasonable price. Have just been adding up total for parts I've ordered and so far it's about $160.00. If that gets the watch running again I'll be happy. Just located a used gold 6mm crown that matches the one on the watch for $42. which is part of the $160 I've spent.

      Everything under the calendar plate looks fine. The rest of the drive train looks to be in good shape as well. Now I'm just waiting on parts.

[anilv]

Hi Kelly,

The used crown was probably swapped out during a service and water resistance is questionable.

I understand A new one is probably uber expensive but given the quality of the case I would say it is justified..

Anilv

[CKelly]

Hi,

   I understand the crown may have issues but they say the threads are good and maybe a gasket is available. In any event I've about blown my budget and if the used one doesn't work I'll just have to go generic until I find some more money. The new crowns I've seen are expensive to say the least. I stripped, inspected and cleaned the watch today. Also put it back together as far as I could while I'm waiting on parts to arrive. Right now I'm going to post a few pictures of what I found along the way which might fit into the comment about water resistance. I didn't take an after picture but the watch does look a lot better now. In the pictures you might notice the glob of stuff at the pallet fork area and the rusty glob at one end of the balance guard.

[CKelly]

Hi,

   Today I decided to take the balance out of the pack and see how it fit. When I installed it the hairspring coils weren't even. It appeared that when someone attempted the earlier repair and removed the balance the spring was bent slightly near the stud forcing the coils to be pushed off center. If you placed the balance cock down the balance would sit about 1/8" off center. Now that I look at all the evidence there is another hairspring in the box of parts and the part I installed was sitting in a nice green Rolex pack. Maybe the spring was bent originally while installing the balance onto the balance cock.  Fortunately I have watched the videos on hairspring manipulation and while I didn't want to practice on a two-toned Rolex I figured it was either fix it or order one so I gave it a shot. Since the spring was bent near the stud it was fairly simple to bend it outward which pulled the coils back into a nice circle and now the spacing is about as even as I can tell under a 20x microscope. No coils are touching and there is a nice movement when I rotate the watch. I should have taken pictures but I was a little grouchy at the time and didn't think about it until I was done.

   Anyway I want to thank Mark for all his videos. I watched the 3135 videos about 3 times and the hairspring videos helped a lot as well. If there is any advice I could give someone when working on a watch they aren't familiar with is do the research. Look at the tech sheets. Look at pictures and if a video is available watch it. If you know about the spring that wants to run off then you can prevent it from happening.

Edited September 7, 2015 by CKelly

[Geo]

Excellent Charles, I'm glad your making good progress! :)

[CKelly]

Hi,

  Well I'm back today with another update and a few more pictures. I got the automatic driving wheel in this week so I was able to get that part installed today. I am posting pictures of what I saw when I cleaned the automatic system. Today I put the watch back together and checked it on the timing machine, There is a beat error but I'm thinking that is because I didn't get the hairspring perfectly straightened when I worked on that. I'm thinking there is still a slight upward bend that is basically pulling the roller jewel a bit forward. I should be able to adjust that. Even with the beat error the watch is only 6 seconds a day slow so I am feeling pretty good about the project. I still have to adjust the new stem length a bit and of course adjust for the beat error, hopefully without having to touch the hairspring itself again.  

[FatherCLock]

Excellent project!!