Jump to content

The worlds longest name - Seiko Alba Spoon Web W440 Secret Agent Man


Recommended Posts

So I was at the local sunday market today, and happened upon a weird little digital watch. I normally avoid them, but this one was a pulsar and it caught my eye.

It was missing the strap - the seller was a big old man in his 60's selling knick knacks like beer glasses. He was asking $5 - I tried bargaining down to $4 but no cigar.
I scored the digital watch and a Russian 9micron Gold plated Zarya with 16 jewels in running order (ladies watch).

In Australia it is quite hard to find anything other than ladies watches because there are hundreds of blokes going around to all the thrift shops and buying up the gents watches. As most men over 40 here are divorced - they have nobody to buy ladies watches for and hence normally I have my pick.

This was a lucky score to find a unisex/mens watch - I knew from straight away that it was something interesting - It had a large screen with many buttons, I initially thought it had a HR monitor or excercise function. From research it cost around $200 US in 1999 and was quite a trendy watch at the time. It is powered by a Seiko module with a pulsar assembly in "China".

I got it home and started having a good look:

sdrel4U.jpg

According to another watch blog, it has the following features:
Other modes are:
- address book
- memo/messages
- chronograph
- timer
- alarm
The full model number is: W440-4000


Beautiful working module
TnBywYO.jpg
aXXDaSQ.jpg
Very grubby - but it is 100% complete minus the strap.
It is a plastic/resin body with a base metal brass bezel that is chrome plated.
It has resin/abs pushbuttons that are fully spring and water sealed.

It has a stainless steel case back with a waterproof seal.

1DeZTVk.jpg
I plan to replate the chrome.

wtTKpNu.jpg
Spotless back - apart from minor marks.

Fqne6WT.jpg
These watches were designed to be serviceable. Not like modern rubbish which is sealed for life. This beauty was able to be stripped down to the bare nuts and circlips.

sqfXQjj.jpg
Starting to ease the buttons out.

pg8P3AH.jpg
Mint original glass- will gently polish it thats it. (Mineral glass)

QkInEBV.jpg
Spring bars for the assembly.

g6qgM5v.jpg
A little trick I use to remove circlips.

cvbQxap.jpg

pNowuHj.jpg

fFGZoFi.jpgA photo of the module

WaqcCO2.jpg
Nice and clean

V6adh8J.jpg


AN old article about the watch from Popular Mechanics;
YZqG65O.jpg

Edited by AlexeiJ1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...
1 hour ago, lianeanderson1 said:

Hi! I was replacing the battery in this Pulsar X440 SAM spoon watch, and a piece came out that I can NOT figure out where to put back!!

What piece?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Hi.

Alexei I am doing just the same on a black spoon web that I purchased in Japan in 2002 i think. 

Did you find a decent strap to fit the watch? I was going to find a nice g-shock 22 mm strap and cut it back to fit the pins if need be? The original strap had a wonderful closing clip like a divers watch.

Anyway I would be really interested to see how you rebuilt this great little watch that can do so much. I have all the original instructions! In Japanese.... ??? It is quite detailed as you can type messages into it etc.

Thanks.

Simon 

Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • What this extra disk next to the pinion? Thats not part of the assembly 
    • It looks like the canon pinion function is part of this great wheel. The pinion nearest the clip runs the minute wheel on the dual side. The pinion nearest the wheel is driven by a small wheel from under the setting lever cover plate that engages in hand setting position.    So when assembled the crown was driving the whole great train. Does this mean the pinions are too tight? Should I attempt to disassemble this great wheel and lubricants?
    • Picking up this side-tracked post again as I just removed a balance staff of a 1920's Omega (35,5L-T1) I was impressed by the way @Delgetti had his setup when he had to change out a balance-staff (https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/28854-new-balance-staff-not-riveting-to-balance/page/2/#comment-244054 Not only that, but also the idea of removing the seat first before punching the staff out from the seat-side, avoiding the whole discussion of the rivet yes/no enlarging the hole. I didn't have the fancy clamps & tools Delgetti has, so I used my screw-head polishing tool. Initially I used #1500 grit diamond paste on the steel wheel, which kinda worked, but very slow. I changed to #800 grit diamond paste, which worked better, but still slow. Then I glued #240 sanding paper to the steel disk; That worked and the disk was hand-driven. Once close to the balance wheel, I took the sanding paper off and continued with #800 diamond paste. One can only do this when the balance wheel sits true on the staff and has no "wobble". I went on grinding until I saw some diamond paste on the rim of the balance wheel. This was as far as I could grind and it seemed that there wasn't much left of the seat. Carefully, with my staking set, I knocked the staff from the seat-side out. Turns out that the thickness of the seat left, now a small ring, was only 0.1mm. The balance wheel hole is in perfect shape and no damage done to the wheel at all. Of course, if the wheel has a "wobble" or isn't seated true on the balance staff, you can't get as close and there will be more left of the seat. In my case, it worked perfect 🙂 I'm very happy how this method worked out ! 😊  
    • As is tradition, one step forward, two steps back. Got the board populated and soldered into place without any issues.   But no hum. So I started testing the coils with an ohmmeter. I got 5.84k ohms across D1 (from red to red in the picture below), which is as expected. But I'm getting an open circuit for the other drive coil and feedback coil, D2 and F1 (from green to each of the two yellows).   Since the movement was working with my breadboard setup, it implies I somehow broke the connection between the coils and the solder lugs. They're all the way at the bottom of the lugs, but maybe the heat migrated down and broke the connections? I guess it's possible it happened while cleaning the flux off, but I used a soft artist's brush and isopropyl alcohol. I did a lot of high magnification examination, and I don't see any issues, but let me know if you see anything I missed or if you can think of anything else I should check.
×
×
  • Create New...