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That sounds about right to me. I`ve serviced a couple of these and I`ll never touch another; parts are v. difficult to source because IWC won`t sell them. If the watch went back to IWC they'd charge a substantial amount to fix it and they'd do the whole 'it has to be fully serviced to our standards' thing.
There is a guy in Australia who has a stock of parts for these and that's probably where this is coming from.
What I don`t understand is the link between a worn rotor post and losing 3 mins / day? I`d be asking the repairer to explain this fully. As far as I remember the rotor/rotor post isn`t prone to wearing on these, that's a good point about the design.
Sadly, vintage IWC ownership can be expensive. It's a shame because the movements are fantastic and they're not difficult to work on. It's the stupid parts supply situation again..........and the manufacturers claim that they're acting in the customers' best interests by restricting parts supply!
Paul
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You are right Paul - Richemont have a clear strategy (they're not on their own) and only anti-competition laws can turn this about. That's a whole different thread!
The part I imagine is the one listed for 160 quid here in Oz on ebay. Looked at it when I woke up earlier when I saw the post.
And like you I was immediately perplexed as to why the winding mech would cause time loss. If there is power to the watch - even less efficient than ideal - it should run per normal I would have thought.
Richard
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I followed up my watchmaker who looks after the 4 IWC's I have that house the 8541b or 854 calibre. He said that it is an interesting part to wear/ be damaged as it is quite a robust component. He suggested that in his view it would require a really good knock to effect damage to it. He wasn't sure you'd see wear in it that suddenly resulted in loss of time keeping. He did suggest doing a full wind by hand and seeing if it still lost time over the 24 hrs - leaving it off your wrist (taking the rotor out of the equation).
If it is still losing time it might point to something else. I hope I remembered that all correctly :-)
Richard
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Thanks for all your help and advice here, which has been very useful. From what I can gather the time loss issue is unrelated to the faulty rotor post that was only discovered once the watch was examined by the watchmaker, so it looks like it will require a service and regulation as well. I looked on the Cousins website and found quite a few parts for this movement but not this specific one and it does look like the watchmaker is obtaining the part from that source in Australia. I find it very disappointing that parts are so difficult and expensive to source.
It's all a bit of mystery really because the watch itself is in excellent condition and doesn't look like it's had much use over the years, let alone hard knocks. From what I could tell the watch was winding quite normally with a healthy power reserve. It's still under guarantee from the seller but after speaking with them yesterday I was far from impressed by their attitude and it left me with a very poor impression.
As things stand I've decided to give the go ahead with the replacement part and repair work. The total cost of ownership including the original purchase price will certainly be on the high side but hopefully I'll be left with an excellent watch that will work well for many more years. I now know more about the situation with IWC.
I had heard IWC were easy to work on and it always has a very solid feel that is not bettered by my various vintage Omegas and Rolex, so all of this was a bit of an eye opener, however I gather Omega and Rolex are also putting the squeeze on vintage replacement parts.
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