Citizen Calibre 8200A / Miyota calibre 8205 Service Walkthrough

[VWatchie]

Disassembly pictures here (Please sort the pictures by name in ascending order)

Assembly pictures here (Please sort the pictures by name in ascending order)

Introduction

To make a long story short, I've got about 100 Indian Citizen watches in my possession. It is one of these 100 watches shown in the pictures above. There is no major fault with them other than that none of them work. We all know that Citizen is a Japanese brand, but these watches are manufactured by HMT in India under license, probably sometime in the 1980s or 1990s.

So, what do you do if you have 100 fine new old stock Indian Citizen watches that don't work? Well, you service and repair them, and then you sell them for a reasonable amount of money. How hard can it be!?

Selling them, once they work, has happily proved quite easy, but repairing them has proved more challenging. So far, every movement has been full of gremlins to defeat.

As usual, I want to remind those of you who have no previous watch service experience that this service walkthrough should not be seen as a tutorial on how to service a movement. It takes a lot of tools, consumables, training and know-how to succeed. Fortunately, there are several excellent resources, like WRT, and watchmaking schools online, and believe me, after six years I still find it insanely interesting and fun!

About the assembly and disassembly pictures

Unlike the disassembly pictures, the assembly pictures document screws, lubrication, and tips and tricks. Regarding the lubrication, I have not found any specific documentation for this movement. Instead, I have used my judgment and experience. It took some experimenting with the lubrication of the date and day change mechanics to get to work smoothly, so I feel a little extra proud of that.

About the Citizen 8200A / Miyota 8205 movement

The movements in these watches are designated Citizen 8200A on the rotor. In practice, they are identical to Miyota's calibre 8205, and if I'm not misinformed the watch manufacturer Citizen owns the movement manufacturer Miyota so there's a natural explanation.

I have previously created a service walkthrough for Miyota's calibre 9015 which is often found in more expensive micro brands. Miyota's 82XX series of movements, such as the 8205 are instead found in more affordable micro brands, but there is no doubt that it is fundamentally an excellent and reliable movement.

So, what do you find when you open an Indian Citizen like this? You find a well-constructed, well-functioning, albeit simple movement. In my opinion, it has a minor construction flaw, but I will report back on that.

I have no idea how Indian HMT operated, but my impression is that these movements were assembled in an unsuitable environment, to say the least, by people with low-quality tools and a lack of knowledge of what a movement is and how it works.

However, the movement parts themselves generally seem to be of decent quality, but when you take the movements apart you find fingerprints, hair, fibres from clothing, glue, and sometimes what I guess could be food residue. I.e. you find everything found in a typical home, so maybe that's where they were put together. As for the lubrication, sometimes it's OK, sometimes it's missing, sometimes it's in the wrong places, and sometimes there's way too much.

However, once repaired, serviced, demagnetized, and adjusted these Indian movements work very well, so well that I don't think you can tell them apart from their siblings that are manufactured and assembled in Miyota's factories in Japan.

Following are some tips and tricks that I hope will be useful.

Stuttering second hand

As in many other movements, the second hand is driven indirectly via the teeth of the third wheel, and to prevent the second hand from stuttering around the dial in a jerky fashion, a friction spring is pressed against the short side of the sweep second pinion. If the friction spring is not tensioned enough, it will not do its job. If this is the case, which is quite common, then the distance between the tip of the friction spring and the rotor bearing can be slightly increased by prying the friction spring slightly in the direction of the red arrow away from the rotor bearing.

Balance staff end-shake

I have long wondered if it would be practical to increase the end-shake of a balance staff using ordinary aluminium foil of the type you usually have in your kitchen, and now I have had the opportunity to test it. I admit it's not a very elegant or perhaps even correct solution, but it seems to work unexpectedly well, at least with this calibre. The aluminium foil that I have in my kitchen is exactly 1/100mm and after I built up the balance cock with two layers the end-shake was perfect.

Guard pin

The metal that the pallet fork's guard pin is made of on this calibre is unusually soft and therefore easy to deform, above all in height, but therefore also easy to correct. Several of the copies I worked on had a deformed guard pin. Normally, the guard pin should run parallel to the fork horns. Why this problem seems to be so common is hard to answer, but maybe my Indian colleagues were a bit careless with their tweezers when handling the pallet fork, or it's a matter of poor QC. Who knows!?

The tip of the sweep second pinion

You might think that all the parts for a certain calibre would be identical, and they largely are, but one exception is the tip of the sweep second pinion whose diameter can vary between different copies of this calibre. It is therefore not certain that the second hand from one copy will fit on another. I have not discovered any more exceptions than this.

The Automatic Winding

The automatic winding on Miyota's movements, including their premium movements such as the 9015, is unidirectional. I've always thought that would mean it's half as efficient as bidirectional winding, but in practice, unidirectional winding seems to be about as efficient as bidirectional winding. As can be seen from the picture, which shows the underside of the barrel and train wheel bridge, not many parts are needed for the automatic winding. I think this simple and well-functioning solution is elegant!

Glue or shellac?

The first time I took this calibre apart I suspected that the balance spring was attached to the stud with shellac, but after cleaning the movement in my watch cleaning machine where the final rinse is 99% IPA, I no longer think so. Instead, I think it's glue that simply looks like shellac.

A small construction flaw

I have had a user of this movement break the winding stem and misalign the threads in the crown believing that he had to pull hard to get the movement into position to set the time. I don't blame him!

This movement has what I would describe as a design flaw that makes it impossible to pull out the winding stem when it is in a certain position.

When you pull out the crown, the sliding pinion moves inwards (upwards in the picture). If you are a little unlucky then the pin (lug) on the sliding pinion will be right opposite the pin on the day and date corrector (as in the picture) so that the two pins collide with each other. When this happens, it becomes impossible to pull out the winding stem to its extreme position to set the time. If you then use force to pull it out, one or a few parts of the keyless work will unfailingly break. Most likely, the stem will come off and the threads in the crown will become crooked.

What one must do as a user of the watch to ensure that the pins do not collide with each other is to rotate the crown slightly while pulling out the stem. When you rotate the crown, you also rotate the sliding pinion, which means that the pin on the sliding pinion does not risk colliding with the pin on the day and date corrector.

Other documentation

I am attaching a couple of PDF documents for the movement and thank @JohnR725 for links to a couple of interesting articles about the collaboration between HMT and Citizen.

That’s it! Thanks for reading!

Citizen 8200,8210,8260,8270,8280.pdf

Spare-parts-reference-for-the-Miyota-8205-8215-movement.pdf

HMT Watches: The Rise and Fall of India’s Watchmaking Titan

HMT Watches: A walk down the memory lane

 

[rossjackson01]

Great post. Doesn't show that I have downloaded your .pdf's But I have. Oooh! It does now. Thank you

Edited December 8, 2023 by rossjackson01
More information

[Kalanag]

Great job as always! 

[VWatchie]

8 hours ago, rossjackson01 said:

Great post. Doesn't show that I have downloaded your .pdf's But I have. Oooh! It does now. Thank you

Thanks, Ross, and you're welcome!

BTW, I just updated the pictures of the oiling of the stem and the sliding pinion in the sequence of assembly pictures. I must say, it's really convenient to store the pictures on my OneDrive instead of directly in the post as it gives me the freedom to update and improve the instructions when and if needed. I believe what we post here is locked for editing after a while depending on your privileges.

[Kalanag]

11 hours ago, VWatchie said:

…I've always thought that would mean it's half as efficient as bidirectional winding, but in practice, unidirectional winding seems to be about as efficient as bidirectional winding...

I thing you are right!

JLC recently replaced the bidirectional windig of its workhorse 889 with unidirectional winding in order to avoid the wear issues of the seesaw mechanism. It seems to work as well.

Old:

New:

Edited December 9, 2023 by Kalanag

[Neverenoughwatches]

14 hours ago, VWatchie said:

Disassembly pictures here (Please sort the pictures by name in ascending order)

Assembly pictures here (Please sort the pictures by name in ascending order)

Introduction

To make a long story short, I've got about 100 Indian Citizen watches in my possession. It is one of these 100 watches shown in the pictures above. There is no major fault with them other than that none of them work. We all know that Citizen is a Japanese brand, but these watches are manufactured by HMT in India under license, probably sometime in the 1980s or 1990s.

So, what do you do if you have 100 fine new old stock Indian Citizen watches that don't work? Well, you service and repair them, and then you sell them for a reasonable amount of money. How hard can it be!?

Selling them, once they work, has happily proved quite easy, but repairing them has proved more challenging. So far, every movement has been full of gremlins to defeat.

As usual, I want to remind those of you who have no previous watch service experience that this service walkthrough should not be seen as a tutorial on how to service a movement. It takes a lot of tools, consumables, training and know-how to succeed. Fortunately, there are several excellent resources, like WRT, and watchmaking schools online, and believe me, after six years I still find it insanely interesting and fun!

About the assembly and disassembly pictures

Unlike the disassembly pictures, the assembly pictures document screws, lubrication, and tips and tricks. Regarding the lubrication, I have not found any specific documentation for this movement. Instead, I have used my judgment and experience. It took some experimenting with the lubrication of the date and day change mechanics to get to work smoothly, so I feel a little extra proud of that.

About the Citizen 8200A / Miyota 8205 movement

The movements in these watches are designated Citizen 8200A on the rotor. In practice, they are identical to Miyota's calibre 8205, and if I'm not misinformed the watch manufacturer Citizen owns the movement manufacturer Miyota so there's a natural explanation.

I have previously created a service walkthrough for Miyota's calibre 9015 which is often found in more expensive micro brands. Miyota's 82XX series of movements, such as the 8205 are instead found in more affordable micro brands, but there is no doubt that it is fundamentally an excellent and reliable movement.

So, what do you find when you open an Indian Citizen like this? You find a well-constructed, well-functioning, albeit simple movement. In my opinion, it has a minor construction flaw, but I will report back on that.

I have no idea how Indian HMT operated, but my impression is that these movements were assembled in an unsuitable environment, to say the least, by people with low-quality tools and a lack of knowledge of what a movement is and how it works.

However, the movement parts themselves generally seem to be of decent quality, but when you take the movements apart you find fingerprints, hair, fibres from clothing, glue, and sometimes what I guess could be food residue. I.e. you find everything found in a typical home, so maybe that's where they were put together. As for the lubrication, sometimes it's OK, sometimes it's missing, sometimes it's in the wrong places, and sometimes there's way too much.

However, once repaired, serviced, demagnetized, and adjusted these Indian movements work very well, so well that I don't think you can tell them apart from their siblings that are manufactured and assembled in Miyota's factories in Japan.

Following are some tips and tricks that I hope will be useful.

Stuttering second hand

As in many other movements, the second hand is driven indirectly via the teeth of the third wheel, and to prevent the second hand from stuttering around the dial in a jerky fashion, a friction spring is pressed against the short side of the sweep second pinion. If the friction spring is not tensioned enough, it will not do its job. If this is the case, which is quite common, then the distance between the tip of the friction spring and the rotor bearing can be slightly increased by prying the friction spring slightly in the direction of the red arrow away from the rotor bearing.

Balance staff end-shake

I have long wondered if it would be practical to increase the end-shake of a balance staff using ordinary aluminium foil of the type you usually have in your kitchen, and now I have had the opportunity to test it. I admit it's not a very elegant or perhaps even correct solution, but it seems to work unexpectedly well, at least with this calibre. The aluminium foil that I have in my kitchen is exactly 1/100mm and after I built up the balance cock with two layers the end-shake was perfect.

Guard pin

The metal that the pallet fork's guard pin is made of on this calibre is unusually soft and therefore easy to deform, above all in height, but therefore also easy to correct. Several of the copies I worked on had a deformed guard pin. Normally, the guard pin should run parallel to the fork horns. Why this problem seems to be so common is hard to answer, but maybe my Indian colleagues were a bit careless with their tweezers when handling the pallet fork, or it's a matter of poor QC. Who knows!?

The tip of the sweep second pinion

You might think that all the parts for a certain calibre would be identical, and they largely are, but one exception is the tip of the sweep second pinion whose diameter can vary between different copies of this calibre. It is therefore not certain that the second hand from one copy will fit on another. I have not discovered any more exceptions than this.

The Automatic Winding

The automatic winding on Miyota's movements, including their premium movements such as the 9015, is unidirectional. I've always thought that would mean it's half as efficient as bidirectional winding, but in practice, unidirectional winding seems to be about as efficient as bidirectional winding. As can be seen from the picture, which shows the underside of the barrel and train wheel bridge, not many parts are needed for the automatic winding. I think this simple and well-functioning solution is elegant!

Glue or shellac?

The first time I took this calibre apart I suspected that the balance spring was attached to the stud with shellac, but after cleaning the movement in my watch cleaning machine where the final rinse is 99% IPA, I no longer think so. Instead, I think it's glue that simply looks like shellac.

A small construction flaw

I have had a user of this movement break the winding stem and misalign the threads in the crown believing that he had to pull hard to get the movement into position to set the time. I don't blame him!

This movement has what I would describe as a design flaw that makes it impossible to pull out the winding stem when it is in a certain position.

When you pull out the crown, the sliding pinion moves inwards (upwards in the picture). If you are a little unlucky then the pin (lug) on the sliding pinion will be right opposite the pin on the day and date corrector (as in the picture) so that the two pins collide with each other. When this happens, it becomes impossible to pull out the winding stem to its extreme position to set the time. If you then use force to pull it out, one or a few parts of the keyless work will unfailingly break. Most likely, the stem will come off and the threads in the crown will become crooked.

What one must do as a user of the watch to ensure that the pins do not collide with each other is to rotate the crown slightly while pulling out the stem. When you rotate the crown, you also rotate the sliding pinion, which means that the pin on the sliding pinion does not risk colliding with the pin on the day and date corrector.

Other documentation

I am attaching a couple of PDF documents for the movement and thank @JohnR725 for links to a couple of interesting articles about the collaboration between HMT and Citizen.

That’s it! Thanks for reading!

Citizen 8200,8210,8260,8270,8280.pdf 3.23 MB · 3 downloads

Spare-parts-reference-for-the-Miyota-8205-8215-movement.pdf 219.35 kB · 1 download

HMT Watches: The Rise and Fall of India’s Watchmaking Titan

HMT Watches: A walk down the memory lane

 

Good well documented read as always watchie. I have a wonder of how aquired 100 nos watches.

[rossjackson01]

I think I am at about 50 watches. At least 10 are working well. I think I have enough donors to complete a few more. 2 years of collecting donors and gaining experience.

Watches of Switzerland - Seafarer - ETA 2989-1

Sekonda 2427 and a 2428

Seiko Bellmatic 4006, Seiko 7009, Seiko 7S26

Bulova Caravelle - AS1721/13

Enicar 167 

Citizen 8200a

Edited December 9, 2023 by rossjackson01

[VWatchie]

5 hours ago, Kalanag said:

JLC recently replaced the bidirectional windig of its workhorse 889 with unidirectional winding in order to avoid the wear issues of the seesaw mechanism.

That's some really interesting information. One would think that such an old, tried and tested movement wouldn't have any dramatic changes, so it's very telling. Thanks for sharing!

2 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I have a wonder of how aquired 100 nos watches.

Well, it's actually quite an interesting story, at least I think so. As you may know or guess, my love started with Russian watches, especially Vostok Amphibia, and a couple of years ago there was a Swedish site that sold incredibly tasteful modifications of these watches. The prettiest I've seen without competition. I never bought any of his mods but visited the site continuously for inspiration for my own mods and for fun.

So one day about half a year ago, the site was down and saddened, I contacted the owner of the site who kindly informed me that the site had gone bankrupt, which I really regretted (tragic!). It had simply become impossible to sell Russian watches with Russia's armed resistance to Western/EU/NATO expansion plans into Ukraine (just 80 years after the last attempt).

It turned out that the owner of the site, before he started importing Russian watches, had imported and sold Indian Citizen, and the hundred watches or so that I now have were left over because they did not work and therefore could not be sold. So we came up with the brilliant idea that I repair and service them while the owner markets and sells them, and then we split the profits in an agreed upon way that feels good to both.

So there you have it! 

Here are a few examples of those Vostok Amphibian mods that I mentioned. Just gorgeous!

Edited December 9, 2023 by VWatchie

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, VWatchie said:

That's some really interesting information. One would think that such an old, tried and tested movement wouldn't have any dramatic changes, so it's very telling. Thanks for sharing!

Well, it's actually quite an interesting story, at least I think so. As you may know or guess, my love started with Russian watches, especially Vostok Amphibia, and a couple of years ago there was a Swedish site that sold incredibly tasteful modifications of these watches. The prettiest I've seen without competition. I never bought any of his mods but visited the site continuously for inspiration for my own mods and for fun.

So one day about half a year ago, the site was down and saddened, I contacted the owner of the site who kindly informed me that the site had gone bankrupt, which I really regretted (tragic!). It had simply become impossible to sell Russian watches with Russia's armed resistance to Western/EU/NATO expansion plans into Ukraine (just 80 years after the last attempt).

It turned out that the owner of the site, before he started importing Russian watches, had imported and sold Indian Citizen, and the hundred watches or so that I now have were left over because they did not work and therefore could not be sold. So we came up with the brilliant idea that I repair and service them while the owner markets and sells them, and then we split the profits in an agreed upon way that feels good to both.

So there you have it! 

Here are a few examples of those Vostok Amphibian mods that I mentioned. Just gorgeous!

Interesting business venture with good prospects, having a business partner that already has a good reputation and marketing knowledge makes a lot of sense. I love the Amphibias i have a custom one but these are really nice.

[rossjackson01]

I'm into Sekonda Slava. I'll now have a look at Vostok Amphibias, not to buy but to compare. Thank you for the information.

Just looked. Lovely watches but way above my practice price. Ah well.

Edited December 9, 2023 by rossjackson01
Spelling, Grammar, more information

[VWatchie]

14 hours ago, rossjackson01 said:

Just looked. Lovely watches but way above my practice price. Ah well.

If you're just looking for watches to practice on and don't care too much about how they look or if they work, I think Russian watches might be the best option.

For example, if you go to the "Watches for parts" category on eBay and search for Vostok, Raketa, and so on, you can sometimes find very affordable deals.

Here is, for example, a search for Vostok in that category: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2499334.m570.l1313&_nkw=vostok&_sacat=165144

In addition, it almost always pays to negotiate the price in this category.

Edited December 10, 2023 by VWatchie