Timex M33 - A small repair

[VascoF]

HI everyone

Some context:

I'm "in love" with old Timex.

As someone who has always liked watches, I knew Timex (my first watch and another project) but, in fact, the brand had never really caught my attention. By pure chance I bought, in a set of two others watches, a small m24 that was sold as not working (run and stop), which actually started working by setting the date by manually moving the hands (15 days).

This coincidence made me interested in its history, its reputation, simplicity/complexity of the movements and also because some were made in Portugal back in 70’s and 80’s.
A few days later I found this beautiful 1975 Viscount, m33 (very low price, almost offered) and this is where I need your help.  It is in very good condition and works well (-20s per day is not a problem for me), and although the day of the week changes correctly, the date is "stuck" on the 10th.

I live in a small town that only has one watchmaker and when I purchased this watch (and having read about these movements) I thought that since it was something theoretically "simple" (probably not related to the movement), he would easily solve the problem. I couldn't be more wrong. It was as if I had proposed a pact with the devil. He refused and said he wouldn't touch the watch (although he had serviced several of my watches before - Seikos and old Swiss brands). He suggested I wear the watch like this or trash it.

As I mentioned in my presentation to the forum, I have some experience in digital watches, but in manual watches I am a complete beginner. I know how to remove hands, crowns and little else.
I've been doing my homework, reading the technical manual and watching a few videos on YouTube. I think I can get to the part of removing the dial without any major problems.

I know that in the Date Frame there is a wheel that at the top has a tab that activates the Day Wheel and that at the bottom activates the Date Lever

My aim is to try not to ruin anything and  get the date working again. The help I needed (I intend to post photos) is that what should I expect? What are the most common problems that cause this system to get stuck (in this case just the date).

 

PS -  My secondary objective is to buy a strap at a overpriced value from the watchmaker just to rub it in his face that I managed to get the watch working properly.

PS2 - In the photos you can see that before midnight the day of the week is already changing but the day of the month has not changed.

 

Sorry about the english.

Best Regards

Vasco

 

[mbwatch]

Hi there!

You have learned how professional watchmakers feel about Timex. It is very difficult to find one willing to work on them, for a few reasons:
1) a lot of them wrongly believe Timex cannot be serviced, are riveted together. This is a myth.

2) when serviced, they still cannot meet the performance standards of jeweled mechanical watches (-20sec/day is good enough for a Timex)

3) customers are unwilling to pay the watchmaker's hourly bench rates because the watches are worth very little

The service manual for the M33 is available at https://heritage1854.com/m33 but you also need the M32 and M31 manuals because they build on each other (31 is the base, 32 has date, 33 has day and date) https://heritage1854.com/m31 https://heritage1854.com/m32

A stuck date changeover can be due to a missing, bent or broken detent spring (part 2576 in the manual) or the date wheel (2556) got stuck or separated from its post, or maybe disengaged from the hour wheel.

With a little confidence, these are not difficult to repair and parts are pretty much interchangeable with any other Timex from the same era having the same features. So it is very easy to find inexpensive spares in the form of junk watches (don't bother trying to search for individual spare parts).

My recommendation would be to find a junk Timex with an M25 (older manual wind with date) and practice a little with it. Follow the service manual from the same website. The automatics are a bit more difficult to work on but once you get a feel for how they fit together, you can make an attempt at your automatic and you would be able to use many spare parts from the M25 if necessary.

To work with most Timex movements, you do not need a lot of tools. Just one screwdriver, 1.4mm is a good size, tweezers, and hand levers to remove the hands plus hand pusher tools to replace them. Of course if you want to do a full cleaning and restoration more is needed. But to get it apart and diagnose, only minimal tools.