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Eta Caliber 2540 Complete Service Walkthrough


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ETA Caliber 2540 Complete Service Walkthrough

 

Looking for more movements that would expand my training scope. I found this one on the Fleabay: an ETA 2540.  It's a "New Old Stock (NOS)" replacement movement, therefore it's not cased, and came with no hands.

 

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As there are many ladies watches, especially vintage ones, that are very small, this was my next obvious choice of movement to work on.  As you can see next to my thumb nail, it's quite a small and compact movement indeed.

 

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Disassembly

First remove the Hour Wheel, and leave the tension spring in place.

 

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Remove the Minute Wheel, Canon Pinion with Drive Wheel, and the Winding Pinion.

 

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The Canon Pinion on this movement isn't the standard fiction fit, it is a "Circlip" type fitting with the Driving Wheel.  Therefore no pinion puller is required on this movement.  Below is a reference photo.

 

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The motion work is now removed, so it's time to turn the movement over.

 

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With the Movement turned over, release all tension from the Mainspring.

 

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Remove the Balance.

 

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Remove the Pallet Cock and Fork.

 

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Remove the Crown Wheel and Ratchet.

 

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Remove the Click and Click Spring, then the Barrel Bridge.

 

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Here is a reference Photo of the Click Spring.

 

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Remove the Train Bridge.

 

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Remove the Second Wheel, Third Wheel, Intermediate Wheel, Escape Wheel and lastly the Barrel.

 

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Finally turn the movement back over, and complete the disassembly by removing the Keyless Work.
Remove the Setting Lever Spring.

 

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Remove the Yoke Spring and then the Yoke.
Then remove the flip the movement over and unscrew the Setting Lever Screw.
Pull the Stem out and the Clutch Wheel and Winding Pinion will fall out.

 

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Here is a reference photo of the Yoke Spring.

 

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Disassembly is now complete.

 

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Cleaning

 

Replace the Balance back onto the Main Plate for cleaning, and clean parts.

 

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Assembly

 

 

Below is the link to the Tech Doc on this movement.

ETA 2540-41.pdf

 

Assembly of this movement is somewhat different in procedural order than normal.  This took me a little while to work out, and I was also hampered by only having a x3 Loupe and a x10 Loupe.  This made it very hard to line-up the Gear Train.  I am still waiting for my good quality x3.5 x5 x7 x10 loupes to come from A*F Swiss, and for this movement I would highly recommend at least a x4 Loupe (preferably a x5).

Firstly replace the Intermediate Wheel, and locate the lower pivot.

 

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Then replace the Barrel and locate the lower pivots for the Third Wheel, Second Wheel, Escape Wheel.

 

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Place the Train Bridge back on, and locate the top pivots as best you can with the limited room you have, and replace the screws for the Train Bridge and just LIGHTLY screw them down.
DO NOT APPLY ANY TORQUE TO THE SCREWS!!

 

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Then with a piece of Rodico, grab the Barrel and remove it as pictured below.
You now can loosen the Train Bridge Screws and gently move the pivots into their jewels completely.  This also allows you to free spin the gears  including the Intermediate Wheel.  Then tighten down the Bridge.

 

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Once you are happy with train gears and have the bridge tight, replace the Barrel, install the Barrel Bridge, and the Crown Wheel.  While tightening down the Barrel Bridge continue to check the free spinning of the gears.

 

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Install the Click and Click Spring, and then the Ratchet ... check it's operation.

 

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Replace the Pallet, and the Pallet Cock.

 

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Replace the Balance and remove the Inabloc Jewels ... clean, then oil them, and replace.

 

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Turn Over.
Refit the Keyless Work.
First the Setting Lever, then the Yoke and Yoke Spring, and lastly the Setting Lever Spring.

 

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Refit the Motion Work.
First the Winding Pinion, then the Canon Pinion with Drive Wheel, and lastly the Minute Wheel.
Replace the Motion Work Cock.

 

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Refit the Hour Wheel, and Tension Spring.

 

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Fit the Dial.

 

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This was a very interesting movement, with a few little tricks to re-assemble it.
Once again, I hope this is of interest and helps others :)

 

 

Edited by Lawson
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There's an Diafix on the escape wheel on yours, and perhaps a endstone on the dial side (see a machined area there), but besides that I can't see any difference.

I wonder if there is a size difference?  What the diameter of your movement?

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6 3/4 lignes (15.3mm) - yours has 7 3/4 - but mine doesn't have a center seconds. Also the hairspring has a different orientation. And besides the diafix on the escape wheel, it has the Kif antishock (just beautiful in my opinion).

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  • 1 year later...

First of all, thank you very much Lawson for making this walk-through! 

This "I'll take you by the hand" guide has given me the confidence to tackle my first watch ever, a N.O.S. ETA 2540. As a training starter my first goal was to strip it, and directly rebuild it. No cleaning nor oiling.

Stripping was pretty straight forward, but while rebuilding it, I encountered some pit-falls. I was struggling with getting the train-bridge back on. Especially the escape-wheel and the second-wheel had a mind of their own in which jewel to go. I ended up taking the train-bridge screws out and worked my way from the center to the rim. Once all the wheels were in place, I installed the screws.

The other problem I had, but that may be due to my total lack of experience, that following the assembling instructions, when assembling the setting lever I found out that setting-lever-screw had to be inserted before installing the barrel-bridge. Not a big problem, I just had to disassemble until the setting-lever-screw could be inserted.

I also went wrong refitting the keyless work. After installation of the setting lever, yoke, yoke-spring and setting-lever, I was left with the winding pinion, clutch wheel and winding stem. They had to go in before the keyless work, so I had to disassemble the levers & springs for another training round :-)

Getting the setting lever "locked" in the winding stem, tightening the setting-lever-screw on the other side, was a hard task and took me ages. I had to take a few walks with our dog ;-) Wondering if that can be done easier?

The news is, that the watch is back together and ....................... running ! :woohoo-jumping-smiley-emoticon:

Next plan, disassemble the watch again, but now taking the main-spring out of the barrel, clean it all and reassemble the watch plus oiling. It's a tiny object, but a huge challenge !!

 

If possible, and if you agree, maybe you could edit your assembly sequence with the points I encountered? Then again, it may well be that it is just my inexperience.......

 

Thanks again for all your efforts you put in this walk-through !

 

Regards: Roland.

Edited by Endeavor
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If possible, and if you agree, maybe you could edit your assembly sequence with the points I encountered? Then again, it may well be that it is just my inexperience.......

 

Thanks again for all your efforts you put in this walk-through !

 

Regards: Roland.

 

Thank-you for your kind words mate.  It's comments like these that make writing these walkthroughs worthwhile :)

Unfortunately you can not edit posts after they have been posted for 20mins, so I can't make any changes to it.

 

I wish you all the best tackling the the barrel and mainspring ... and hope your skills grow along with your enjoyment in watch repair.

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Thank you Lawson!

Too bad that you're not allowed to edit, so I hope people read on...... or if & when inexperienced people like me, encounter the same mishaps, then read my post and get the German "Aha erlebnis" (Aha experience :-)))).

I hope I can do the barrel and main spring. It's has to be done by hand as I haven't got the tools........ a test to see if my nerves and heart are strong enough........

BTW; our dog seems to be very happy with the additional walks........... ;-)

 

Thanks again; Roland.

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Second Strip & Rebuild: Lessons learned which I like to share.........

 

Training round two was to totally strip the watch, clean, rebuild & oiling. Stripping the watch went without problems. New for me was to remove, clean, install & oil the mainspring by hand. I found two informative instructions video's on YouTube:

 

1)

2)

 

The mainspring from the 2540 is relative small & stiff (see picture below, ruler in centimeters) and I found handling relative easy. I didn't think it was too flimsy or prone to brake / twist.......of course, for the size/thickness, all relative speaking.

One has to make sure that the finger cots are really tight around your fingers. Any excess material will get in between the spring while winding it back into the barrel. Also, leaving your finger nails a bit longer helps to get a firm grip on the barrel and to control / push the spring into the barrel.

 

While assembling the watch, I had one problems and a failure:

1) One of the tiny screws of the barrel-bridge flew/shot out of my tweezers; unknown direction! A long search on the floor, with strong lights, didn't bring anything. As last resort, a new paper-bag was fitted in the vacuum-cleaner and vacuumed the floor. Inserted a very strong magnet (a neodymium magnet reclaimed out of a harddisk-drive) into the bag and lo and behold .... the "microscopic" screw was found again!

2) Completed the watch and it was running fine. Last thing to do was to oil the jewels from the balance. Never done before, and I assumed that the jewel shock-springs were strong and could fly away. Having just had the experience with the barrel-bridge screw, I concentrated too much on holding down one side of the shock-spring with a peg wood and exercised too much force on one side and broke a leg :-(

 

Of course, I'm now a bit disappointed that it went wrong at the very end, but for this being my first watch ever..............

It was great to do this tiny watch (thanks again Lawson ;-) and I will now move on to a N.O.S. Tissot 741, which is also a ETA 2540, but with date ring.

I hope somebody will have some benefits from my mishaps / lessons learned.

 

Best regards: Roland.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you Lawson for posting this. I bought a couple of 2550 and 2551 which are pretty similar. There is one thing I was wondering. I have to say that I am a beginner. I started looking into watch repair in the beginning of this year.

My question: I tend to start with the keyless work before I move on to the other side of the movement. Is there a reason that you assemble the keyless work later in the progress? Just curious.

I also got a tipp from a watchmaker to fit the balance wheel as the very last step in order to prevent damage. Any recommendation on that?

I will post my 2551 disassembly and assembly soon. Maybe I can get some more comments. Thanks.

Cheers Alexander

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Roland, regarding your missing screw. Good Idea with the vac. I bought a magnetic tool holder for the workshop. It's roughly 60cm long and has a very strong magnet to hold pliers and wrenches. I use this as a broom and found a lot of stuff with this. Of course I have a cheap demagnetizer which does an excellent job.

The same happened to me when I handled the incabloc jewel. It took me two days to find it. In the end I took the flat hand, a strong light and pushed my hand lightly over the carpet. I then saw the incabloc jumping. I tried to grab it with my fingers and there it jumped away again. I re-found it and grabbed it with the tweezers.

:woohoo-jumping-smiley-emoticon:

I spent a considerable amount under the workbench so far :unsure:

Cheers Alexander

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On 29/04/2016 at 8:37 PM, AlexanderB said:

Thank you Lawson for posting this. I bought a couple of 2550 and 2551 which are pretty similar. There is one thing I was wondering. I have to say that I am a beginner. I started looking into watch repair in the beginning of this year.

My question: I tend to start with the keyless work before I move on to the other side of the movement. Is there a reason that you assemble the keyless work later in the progress? Just curious.

I also got a tipp from a watchmaker to fit the balance wheel as the very last step in order to prevent damage. Any recommendation on that?

I will post my 2551 disassembly and assembly soon. Maybe I can get some more comments. Thanks.

Cheers Alexander

Hi Alex and welcome to the forum mate :)

In answer to your question: This is just the way I've been taught mate, and your mentor may teach a different way.  This is why I like to see people post detailed threads on how they repair and restore movements.  Then all the different techniques can displayed, and people can try them out and see which works best for them; or is an improvement on their current procedure.

I also agree that adding the balance as the final step is a good way to avoid damaging it.  But I often fit it to make sure the work I've done on the train is functioning correctly before continuing.  This can often be a real time saver if a fault is found and further work is needed to be done to any wheels, jewels, mainspring etc...  If you have the correct movement holder and have gained experience and confidence working on movements any chance of damage to the balance will be almost zero.

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