Reply With Quote.
PICTURES! :lol:
john
I picked up a nice low serial numbered (55xx) Timor WWW last week for a measly £10.
Currently a definite non-runner, it needs a crown and stem, and looks as if the balance staff is u/s too. On the good side, it has the original hands (minute hand slightly bent though), clean dial and the case is remarkably scratch-free.
And even better, the seller has some more I can have for the same price. :D
Photo's to follow.
.
PICTURES! :lol:
john
THIN is the new BLACK
Some quick shots for now. They make it look worse than it is for real.
Now... where to source the parts?
I've got a similar watch, bought for a similar price and with similar problems, so if you find out where to get the parts, I'd love to know. I took it to a very, very posh watch expert who normally only fixes Omega and Rolex watches, and he said he'd charge £300 to fix it, including a relume of the rather dangerous radium dial..!
I can source really nice dials for Timor WWW's if anyone needs them @ £20 each. Can't get other brands unfortunately.
Cheers
Foggy
that you try a *want to buy* on the PX on MWR (Military Watch Resource).
http://www.broadarrow.net
That's a lovely Timor you have there. IMHO it should not go unattended.
Good luck...Joel M
The Timor is a nicely proportioned watch. I was lucky enough tot buy an almost mint example from Foggy a while ago and it's a pleasure to wear. All the other watches in the bottom pic have moved on, but the Timor has stayed...
(I think I saw a Timor for restoration on eBay this week).
I can supply the Parts
The repair price of £300 is a bit high
£30 would be more like it.
Let me know exactly what is required
Cheers
Ian
Imho, the Timor is a very attractive watch, with some particuarly nice characteristics, including the finish on the case, the hands (including the neat and clear subdial hand) as well as running very nicely.
Here is an stylised snap (still with wabi :) ):
Is that an issued kukri Ailfrid?
I redid a Timor WWW a couple of weeks ago. The movement itself is a Peseux 190 (or 195 --- I don't have all my notes with me, but I'm pretty sure it is a 190). So, there are plenty of parts, etc., available for the movement itself. The balance has a Breguet HS, which might make finding a replacement balance complete a tad more difficult, although staffs should be available. I don't know about case parts.
Best wishes,
Bob
It' was given to me by a Gurkha soldier as a gift.Originally Posted by Galea
Best regards,
AP :)
Great blades those kukris and adaptable for a wide variety of jobs :)
Oh yes, from making chairs, clearing jungle to dispatching items or organisms. I like them very much.
Best regards,
AP :)
One of my favourite, i happened to buy mine not exactly :shock: like the price of yours, but luckily complete.
Before :
After :
Enjoy it ! :wink:
Regards from NJ...Joel M
Thanks Joel. :wink:
Happy to read you here. :)
I got two with broken balance staffs a couple years back. I sent them both to Chris Heal for repair. He got some staffs (more than I needed as I recollect) and the watches came back running perfectly.
Both got repaired, serviced and new crystals for what I thought was a very reasonable sum.
He may be able to assist?
The spare parts arrived this morning, thanks Ian. :)
Crown and stem are spot on, cheers.
I've had another close look at the balance, and it seems to be undamaged.
Out of curiousity, I gently pressed on the end of the balance bridge, by the jewel. Voila! She started up fine, and has now been running for 8 hours straight. Dial down or on the side only though.
Could someone have overtightened the balance bridge and given it a slight upward bend, or something like that? Dislodged jewel?
Sorry, just thinking aloud.
All the best,
Paul
After leaving it sitting on my computer bench for months, I thought I'd give her a winding.
Lo and behold, she's now running fairly happily dial-up. :?
Ran all night too, stopped when I picked her up at lunchtime, then started again.
So, in celebration I finally got around to trimming the stem to length and fitting the crown properly, cleaned all the crud off the case and removed, polished and refitted the crystal.
Will keep an eye in her over the weekend before deciding on a service or not. (Funding issues at this time of year. :wink: )
TTFN,
Paul
If anyone can help I still need a overcoil hairspring or balance complete for my Timor WWW watch.
I am advised a AS1203 or AS1204 will fit. The movement is a Calibre 6060.
Cousins have complete AS1203 balances in stock, £11.95 +VAT.
Hope that helps,
Paul
Very interesting, but do you know if they sell with Breguet or flat hairspring ?Cousins have complete AS1203 balances in stock, £11.95 +VAT.
Hope that helps,
Paul
Thanks, Aldo. :wink:
Aldo
You are unfortunately correct in questioning if they have a flat hairspring.
In the absence of a Breguet example can anyone comment if the flat spring type will fit?
Neil
All WWWs have a precision balance, they are gold coloured, while the relevant civvy type movements have a regular balance, apart the branded like Omega Longines and so on.
Fitting a flat hairspring on the original balance is not easy.
First of all a new regulator is needed, the Breguet one has the pins positioned exactly for that type of hairspring.
Second, each hairspring is calibrated for its balance wheel, fitting a flat one it could be too weak, a new calibration is necessary.
Hope this helps.
:wink:
This discussion has been really interesting. I've also got a Timor WWW and it was the first WIS-type watch I bought, nearly a year and a half ago. It was an eBay buy, for the modest sum of £40, and fired with enthusiasm, I took it to a high-end watch repairer who told me that the balance stem (?) was shot and that he'd fix it for £300, a sum which would include making safe the radium dial and restoring it.
Since then, it's been sat in a box, pending funds for restoration. Does anyone know of repairers who would do the same work for a bit less...?
In the unlikey event that any new sources have appeared, I am still looking for an over coil hair sring for my Timor WWW Watch.
I found the chap who I got my Timor from last year at the show last week, and he'd brought along "some bits and bobs I might be interested in".......
The top six came home with me, the bottom one is last year's one. :D
The bad news.....
They all need balance staffs replacing, one is missing the whole assembly. Another is missing quite a few parts, and there are cracked crystals, missing/bent hands etc.
The good news.....
There's enough parts between them to complete four of the six, balance staffs excepted.
Interesting to compare the two dial designs, and the case of the watch centre left is noticeably different to the rest, much higher and chunkier.
I've got a nice spread of serial numbers now too:
K12xx
K32xx
K46xx
K55xx (from last year)
K76xx
K77xx
K80xx
TTFN,
Paul
Hi -
For info - I will be selling my Timor ( in excellent condition) in the next few days -
keep a look out on the sales forum if you're interested. UK sale only.
Best wishes,
TTPS.
My example for which I still need a over coil hair spring has the number K9556.
Does anyone know what the serial numbers went up to.
A quick update:
I started my training at the local watchmakers this week, and as part of that I get to practice on my own watches so I've begun with the Timors.
Here's what I've discovered so far:
The Timor Cal. 6060 is indeed an AS 1203 movement, and is marked as such underneath the dial.
Depending on which reference source you use, there are up to three different balance staffs for the AS 1203-1204 movement..... :roll:
According to an old Bestfit catalogue, there's the standard one, the Incabloc one and another one with an as-yet unidentified suffix code.
The ancient Rhonda catalogues I have only list the first two.
The MOD seem to have issued blunt screwdrivers and lump hammers, instead of a proper tool, for removing and replacing the crystal locking rings.
One of the Timors is in a different WWW case to the rest.
The steps around the crystal are more pronounced on this case, and there is a three-digit number stamped on the underside of one of the lugs (which I can't remember. I'll make a note when I get to work in the morning). The locking ring has six notches instead of the three on the other cases.
More to come over the next few weeks. :wink:
All the best,
PB
Great stuff Paul, fascinating. Best wishes for the your apprenticeship, how very exciting and interesting.
Look forward to hearing how it progresses and to the discoveries!
Best wishes and regards,
AP.
Excellent stuff - look forward to hearing more.
Cheers
Foggy
Grand stuff Paul. I'll be an avid reader of the updates to this thread.
My recently acquired Timor WWW viewtopic.php?f=11&t=64147&p=666107&hilit=www#p666 107 is with my watchmaker having a new balance fitted . He managed to find one but not sure exactly which one. When I bought the watch the regulator was way off centre.
Cheers
dunk
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Hi ramc181, out of interest your middle left timor is in a Record case is it not?
Yes, that's the one in the odd case.
The only markings on the case itself is 838 stamped into one of the lugs. The caseback is a standard Timor WWW.
All the best,
PB
Hi, on the off chance does anyone have a spare timor case?, i have the caseback, dial, hands and movement. I have a spare record case. It does fit, but would be nice to get it back in it's proper skin.
HI,
Where do you get the third staff in bestfit I can only find 75 ordinary 737 inca ???
Cheers
Ian
Hi Ian,
I'll make a note of the number when I get into the workshop tomorrow and report back.
All the best,
PB
Here's the three staffs listed in the Bestfit 3rd Edition:
AS1203: Reg - 75
AS1203: Inca- 737
AS1203: Hairspring 60 - 862
After cross-referencing, I dug out a long-undisturbed Ronda System box 1 from a very dusty self this afternoon.
Inside the lovely bakelite case, oh joy! Four unused 176 staffs in their little ampoule. :D
I'm not allowed to use them until I've proved I can do the job competently, so I've been given a pile of small ladies' watch movements to practice removing, stripping and rebuilding balance assemblies accurately and repeatedly before I can get on with the Timors.
My boss, bless 'im, is of the mind that if I can do this on these tiny movements, then regular sized ones should be simple. :wink:
All the best,
PB
AH! from the variation listing
Best of luck with the ladies movements I can hadly see them never mind fix them!!
All the best
Ian :D
I somehow managed to get a few of the tiny balance assemblies rebuilt without breaking too many parts :P , and amazingly the ladies' watches ran again, so I was set free to start on the Timors today.
The first one off the stack had had the balance removed, which stripped down nicely after I'd marked the positions of the hairspring and roller in relation to the wheel.
Once the stud was released the hairspring came away easily as the regulator has two simple pins rather than a boot to be swiveled out of the way. This was a great relief as I didn't want to damage a hairspring.
The roller was released from the staff and put safely to one side.
Using the staking tool I pressed the old balance staff out and checked the balance wheel was flat.
Selecting the new staff (kindly supplied ages ago by Ian) I mounted it up in the staking tool, placed the balance wheel over it, and pressed them together.
Or more to the point, I didn't.
The staff was too narrow for the hole in the wheel. I had a closer look, in case the staff was like the one on the 6/0 Walthams where it has to be expanded to fit, but no. Time for a cuppa and a think.
First thing, try a different staff. Same non-result.
OK, if changing the staff doesn't work, how about a different balance wheel?
A second balance was dismantled as above, and the staff fitted perfectly this time, so I continued and reassembled the balance, making sure the spring and rollers were refitted in their original orientation to the marks I'd made earlier.
(Out of interest, I measured the old staff afterwards, and found it to be noticeably oversize. I wonder when that was fitted, and why?)
As this first watch was becoming a "Bitza" I decided to build it from the best of the available parts, so I selected the cleanest movement and refitted the balance assembly, a quick wind and it was beating strongly. :)
The nicest dial and the least-cruddy hands went on next, and the whole lot went into the tidiest case.
After running it on the bench for a couple of hours, and sorting a binding hand, it stopped.
The mainspring was slipping in the barrel, so I simply swapped that over with another, and fitted a Bonklip I'd been keeping for just this occasion.
I've been wearing it for the last six hours, and although it's lost about a minute I'm happy with that.
Now I know it works, the next job will be to strip it all down again and service it.
Sorry, no photos from today, but I'll try to take the camera in over the next few days to document the same process on the others. :wink:
Lessons learnt today:
1)
Don't panic when things don't go by the book. The book is usually right.
2)
I have noted three different dial versions in the stack:
The original black dial printed over silver markings underneath, recessed sub-dial.
A second type, the same pattern but a black dial overprinted with white markings, recessed sub-dial.
MOD redial, white printing on black dial, no recess for sub-dial.
3)
The Carpet Monster likes balance staffs.
That's all for today, more soon hopefully.
All the best,
PB
:thumbleft:
Here's the state of watch No1. so far, please ignore the dust. :wink:
Cosmetically, I'll try to polish the scratches out of the crystal rather than try to find a replacement if I don't need to.
It looks like I'll have to work on the balance screws to get it close enough to regulate.
Anyone know what the frequency should be?
All the best,
PB
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