Tissot PRC 200 - One weird chronograph.

[eccentric59]

Reference number T014427A. Movement ETA  C01.211

The rookie mistake.

I saw this listed on eBay for $300 and offered the seller $250 without doing any research on the model or movement. I knew it was a non-runner, which is why he was selling for about half of the running price for similar models.

 

The first surprise.

The display back crystal was so scratched that you could barely see the movement. Everything else showed signs of wear but nothing like this. The only thing I could imagine was that the previous owner was a performer in a Renaissance festival and wore it over his chain mail.  

 

The movement shock.

I knew something was odd as soon as I got the movement out of the case. Half of it was plastic.  So NOW I did a little research. This is an ETA movement based on the Omega 1045 and/or the Lemania 5100. There are some minor differences between the three, but they are all bases on the same design. The one big exception is that the ETA C01.211 has a plastic pallet fork and escape wheel. (more on that later) There is a very good strip down of this movement on youtube which I followed very closely.

 

 

The Diagnosis.

What I found initially when I began stripping the movement was a shock spring floating around inside and a missing cap jewel from the dial side of the balance. 

It is clearly bent and I assume the watch took a pretty substantial impact to knock the jewel and spring out like that (never found the jewel - more on that later, too). The balance staff pivots looked in decent shape. But hey, proof of concept for shock settings, right?  I was able to find a suitable cap jewel and I had a Novodiac spring on hand so before I had it in pieces I was able to replace them and the watch ran, so that was almost that. 

If you watch the video referenced above, that's the stripdown better than I could have shown it. I am going to go into the service and rebuild in subsequent posts, but it's Christmas day after 9:00 p.m. here and tomorrow is a work day so I'll post more tomorrow. I want to cover the rebuild in stages and go into some detail on the unusual things specifically found in this movement.

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, eccentric59 said:

the ETA C01.211 has a plastic pallet fork and escape wheel.

One of the minor problems with the movement like this is it's basically restricted the Swatch group watch companies which don't like us which means technical information is practically nonexistent and any of the supplemental guides are also going to be nonexistent

Then for the lubrication of your plastic escapement this is what Swatch group recommends

 

[eccentric59]

6 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

lubrication of your plastic escapement

That was a hard find, since the available documents are for the Omega and Lemania movements which use a more traditional escapement.

Beginning the rebuild.

The first thing that went together was the keyless works. This has to go in before the chronograph side because the plastic plate that holds most of the chrono levers in place covers most of the keyless. Oh, did I mention that the chronograph complication is on the dial side of the main plate? Nothing special with the keyless works. Pretty standard ETA stuff.

I suppose this is technically a column wheel chronograph, but to me it seems to incorporate a good bit of cam action as well with the column wheel attached to the main plate with a fixed stud rather than a screw.

Since the plastic plate that holds the minute and hour counter wheels in place also has the date jumper and date quickset attached with studs and cover the shock setting, now is the best time to clean and lubricate it. As JohnR725 pointed out, the Swatch group hates independent and hobbyist watchmakers by using the three notch version of the Novodiac setting.

 

The is a version of this setting that has one notch where you can insert one leg/dimple/bump, whatever they are called, of the spring under the lip and rotate it with two pair of tweezers, but NO, ETA had to use this one where even with three hands it would be difficult. You need a special tool to press the legs of the spring -- and ONLY the legs -- so you can simultaneously capture them under the lip of the setting. Great, another single purpose tool. 

I found out the hard way that assembling the chronograph works makes assembling the train side much easier. The center plate/spring had a brass piece attached that is the pivot hole for the runner wheel, which is fit from the train side and makes it next to impossible to install the train bridge if this wheel isn't in its pivot. At this point the levers and wheels are in place simply by sitting on posts or with only one side in a hole. The minute and hour wheels have heart cams on the underside and are in contact with the levers, which are now under tension from the springs. One false move and it's watch-part Jenga! The plastic plate secures it all in place.

 

(sorry, I don't seem to have a shot of the plate without some of the motion works, but I am NOT going to strip the movement again just to get it.  )

Next, the train side. See you in the next post.

[eccentric59]

The Train of Wheels.

The main difficulty here isn't assembly, but holding it in the movement holder. The plastic plate on the dial side just doesn't get along with standard movement holders and even this heavy brass holder has some problems getting a grip. I thought about 3D printing something, but for a movement I'll probably not see again, I just struggled through.

There are two plastic "bridges" on the train side. The lower bridge shaped like a crescent just has two bosses that friction fit in the main plate. This is little more than a spacer. The upper plastic bridge covers the bottom of the keyless works and holds the click, the hack and parts of the automatic works. This attached with two screws from the dial side.

The ballet starts with placing the chronograph seconds runner on the correct side of the retention spring.  Then place the  fourth wheel, the escape wheel, intermediate wheel and the crown wheel and ratchet driving wheel on the plastic bridge. Top that off with that little brass plate over the crown wheel. Finally you have that monstrosity of the coupling runner and coupling yoke (That's what the Omega manual calls these parts). The yoke has three little tabs that have to slide into a slot on the runner while you position the pivot in the hole through the main plate, engage the escape, fourth, and intermediate wheels and the seconds runner while trying to keep the yoke upright. And (yes, there's more) you have to retract the seconds hammer or it will slide under the seconds runner and raise it just high enough for the train bridge not to settle into place.

Getting the train bridge to settle on all five pivots is akin to Sisyphus rolling his rock up the mountain. Everything slips out of their respective holes at least once for each pivot.  Finally you get the main plate situated and screwed down and breathe a sigh of relief knowing you didn't forget to place the hack again before tightening it all up (ask me how I know.)

Once the train is spinning freely, you can place the barrel. Let's talk about the barrel. This is not your ordinary barrel. No, it's a split barrel with the main spring in the lower part and the cover plate/wheel riveted to a hollow arbor. 

The lid is actually a wheel. The mainspring sits in the base of the barrel as usual, but the arbor and top wheel combo slide down onto the barrel until the spring engages the arbor hook. You can then slide this into place and secure it with the post. The top of the post is then slid under the plate to secure it. When you wind this movement, the top wheel rotates and the barrel base stays stationary. When the watch runs, the top wheel is held by the click and the barrel send power through the train. Basically the barrel cover is combined with the ratchet wheel. 

Originally I had tried to reuse the mainspring that came with the watch. It didn't look too bad and this model was introduced sometime in the mid 2000's (2006?). But once wound it would only give me an amplitude in the low 200s or upper 190s. A new mainspring got it up to 320°-ish

Next I'll complete the movement with the motion and calendar works.

[RichardHarris123]

Great title and post, indeed a wierd movement.  

[eccentric59]

The Motion and Calendar Works.

The canon pinion is trapped under the minute recorder bridge when the chrono works was assembled. Above the plastic plate are the minute wheel, minute running wheel, the hour runner and several intermediate wheels. The thing is that running wheels are driven by the minute heart, although it sets the hour runner as well. This is a two level wheel dropped over the canon pinion with the heart on the bottom and the hour runner (large black plastic wheel) in between the upper and lower wheel of the heart wheel combo. When you slide the heart cam wheel over the canon pinion, you have to hold it about halfway down to be able to slide in the hour runner or you won't be able to get the hour runner to drop on its post in under the upper wheel of the heart wheel. And you then have to retract the hammer so the heart wheel will drop all the way down or the other wheels won't mesh properly. I'm sure the engineers at the Swatch group were chuckling when they thought about someone struggling without a service manual. I should at least get a piece of cheese at the end of this labyrinth. 

 

The one (and only one) thing they did to make assembly easier is to not have to but the day jumper spring in until the cover plate was on. When you put on the hour wheel and cover plate, the spring just drops into position in the plate through the slot. Maybe that's my reward for getting this far. 

 

To wrap things up, all that's left is the dial, hands and recasing the movement ... at least you'd think that. And you'd be wrong. First, you have to put the movement ring in the movement BEFORE you put the dial and hands on (ask me how I know that, too) And then you clean the inside of the crystal, blow off the dust from the dial and ... wonder why the chronograph doesn't run. The pusher doesn't reach the operating lever.

Wha? The illustration shows the watch how I received it. The pushers were in good shape and looked original but they were much too short with this movement ring. The red line illustrates the maximum depth the pushers travel. I could find nothing about this but the ring was beefy and had holes that looked like they could accommodate extensions, so I ended up buying a couple sets of varying diameters and lengths to get a proper fit. It does seem to work, but I have no idea if that's the way they watch shipped from the factory or if these are the original pushers or if I just missed something. 

My theory is that the original owner dropped the watch, popping out the shock jewel and spring and took it to someone to repair. When the person opened the back and saw the movement they  threw their hands up and gave the watch back, unknowingly dropping two pusher extensions and one cap jewel on the floor. that's the only thing I can think of to account for the missing pieces. 

I got everything back together and put it on the timegrapher. After a little tweaking I have it running at +/- 15 seconds 320° amplitude and BE of 0.2 to 0.5 depending on position. At this point I'm letting it run for a week before I look at the timing again.

The winding works is pretty simple. Really just a single wheel with a click and the rotor -- it only winds in one direction.

And now the final peculiarity.

With the the chronograph running, the minute and hour counters don't "jump" but track smoothly with the seconds hand.

 And THAT should be all folks, but just today I saw another one come up for auction on eBay and put in a bid ... WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??

Edited December 27, 2023 by eccentric59

[JohnR725]

2 hours ago, eccentric59 said:

I got everything back together and put it on the timegrapher. After a little tweaking I have it running at +/- 15 seconds 320° amplitude and BE of 0.2 to 0.5 depending on position. At this point I'm letting it run for a week before I look at the timing again.

Your amplitude looks quite spectacular.

Then for the timing specifications I don't recall ever seeing this before they actually recommend waiting two days before you even measure anything? Just in case you don't have your timing specifications here they are

 

 

[Jon]

On 12/27/2023 at 2:57 AM, eccentric59 said:

The Motion and Calendar Works.

The canon pinion is trapped under the minute recorder bridge when the chrono works was assembled. Above the plastic plate are the minute wheel, minute running wheel, the hour runner and several intermediate wheels. The thing is that running wheels are driven by the minute heart, although it sets the hour runner as well. This is a two level wheel dropped over the canon pinion with the heart on the bottom and the hour runner (large black plastic wheel) in between the upper and lower wheel of the heart wheel combo. When you slide the heart cam wheel over the canon pinion, you have to hold it about halfway down to be able to slide in the hour runner or you won't be able to get the hour runner to drop on its post in under the upper wheel of the heart wheel. And you then have to retract the hammer so the heart wheel will drop all the way down or the other wheels won't mesh properly. I'm sure the engineers at the Swatch group were chuckling when they thought about someone struggling without a service manual. I should at least get a piece of cheese at the end of this labyrinth. 

 

The one (and only one) thing they did to make assembly easier is to not have to but the day jumper spring in until the cover plate was on. When you put on the hour wheel and cover plate, the spring just drops into position in the plate through the slot. Maybe that's my reward for getting this far. 

 

To wrap things up, all that's left is the dial, hands and recasing the movement ... at least you'd think that. And you'd be wrong. First, you have to put the movement ring in the movement BEFORE you put the dial and hands on (ask me how I know that, too) And then you clean the inside of the crystal, blow off the dust from the dial and ... wonder why the chronograph doesn't run. The pusher doesn't reach the operating lever.

Wha? The illustration shows the watch how I received it. The pushers were in good shape and looked original but they were much too short with this movement ring. The red line illustrates the maximum depth the pushers travel. I could find nothing about this but the ring was beefy and had holes that looked like they could accommodate extensions, so I ended up buying a couple sets of varying diameters and lengths to get a proper fit. It does seem to work, but I have no idea if that's the way they watch shipped from the factory or if these are the original pushers or if I just missed something. 

My theory is that the original owner dropped the watch, popping out the shock jewel and spring and took it to someone to repair. When the person opened the back and saw the movement they  threw their hands up and gave the watch back, unknowingly dropping two pusher extensions and one cap jewel on the floor. that's the only thing I can think of to account for the missing pieces. 

I got everything back together and put it on the timegrapher. After a little tweaking I have it running at +/- 15 seconds 320° amplitude and BE of 0.2 to 0.5 depending on position. At this point I'm letting it run for a week before I look at the timing again.

The winding works is pretty simple. Really just a single wheel with a click and the rotor -- it only winds in one direction.

And now the final peculiarity.

With the the chronograph running, the minute and hour counters don't "jump" but track smoothly with the seconds hand.

 And THAT should be all folks, but just today I saw another one come up for auction on eBay and put in a bid ... WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??

Great walkthrough which will help many here if they take on this movement. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us!