zodiac not ticking

[Sanders]

Hi everyone,
Last year I bought in an outlet store 4 watches, few of them with battery. Among them there is one Zodiac, when I bought it was not ticking so I thought it was just a battery problem, although the watch was brand new. This year I decided to start using it so I changed the battery and I turns out that is not ticking.
I am even afraid to go to the watch store and ask how much the reparation will cost. I have tried with 2 new batteries, but noting is moving, I event think that these kind of watches have not repair. Hopefully I am wrong. Any hints what to do?
Thanks,
Sanders

 

[Gpsluvr]

The battery compartment should have an orange insulator at the bottom of it, with the contact bar sticking above it. The battery goes in button or negative down and on top of that contact bar. Make sure the insulator is there and that you didn’t accidentally bend the contact bar. It is usually a very thin gold plated bar and breaks off easily. Can you check these things and send us a photo of the movement with the battery out and beside it? It probably has an inexpensive Swiss Ronda movement that won’t cost too much to replace if it still doesn’t work. Look closely at the red coil that is close to the battery. It shouldn’t have any marks on the wires. Sometimes that gets scratched when changing the battery and it will be ruined more than likely. If everything looks good, then one other trick that works on movements that are good but just locked up with dust or from years of inactivity, is to place a very small drop of lighter fluid on top of the movement in he center where the jewels are. Then blow it dry with canned air from the computer department of a store. Don’t put the back on if it is not completely dry as the moisture will condense on the crystal from the inside. Let us know how it goes. Steve


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[Sanders]

Thank you Steve, appreciated your guidance and time for helping me.

I opened the watch, the insulator was still there between the bottom and the battery. I checked that the golden plate contacts properly to the battery. As far as I can see, the red coild is intact.

I manually moved back and forth the watch's date and time, and also blowed compressed air as you suggested, but unfortunately is still dead.

I don't have any watch lighter fluid and I am afraid to keep opening the rest of the screws. Basically I have a cheap watch repair kit and none of the screwdrives are small enough for those.

Now I could consider changing the movement depending on the price, otherwise I will just take it to repair.
I was checking movements on eBay but I am not sure if there are compatible movements for this watch, because I didn't find anything for Zodiac ZO8550.

Thanks again!

Sanders

[Sanders]

I forgot to use the zoom from my camera, sorry for that.

[Chopin]

These movements are easy to find and cheap to replace so if there's a technical problem it'll be easy and cheap to get this problem fixed.

Very beautiful watch, btw.

[rogart63]

The movement is a Ronda 505 i think. Buy new one and change the coil and circuit. It's 4 screws that you need to remove. That you can do with a cheap set of tools . The movement cost a £5 . 

[Sanders]

Hi,
I went to a well known jewelry in Vienna and the woman told me that she didn't have a tool to open this kind of watch ( confused face).
Then I went to another one and they told me, sorry we don't repair Zodiac.
The last one, I went to a Fossil store and they told me they have official support for Zodiac, but they need to send the watch to France...
I don't want to send my watch to France so I will try to fix it myself.

Current status:
I reached this point where I am not sure how to remove the front properly.
Once I remove the hands, how do I remove the blue cover?

 

 

 

[Sanders]

Finally I found a store that repaired this watch. It costed 20€ including battery change. I am happy that I didn't chose to replace the movement myself, I would have spent 25€ for the new movement and probably I would have not be able to fix it properly.
Thanks for the guidance and support
Sanders