WS 28: Overhauling a Tissot manual wind chronograph (project start)

Foreword

For years this was my father's daily chronograph. It started to run slow and erratically he commented. Also he received an Omega Flightmaster GMT chronograph from his employer and thus the Tissot was out of duty. I remember the Omega Flightmaster as my father's daily watch very well. Being older, my father wanted something lighter and easier to read. So I suggested he should wear this white "Grand Seiko-like" Kinetic (please use the brower's back button to come back here). He is faithfully hanging on to the Kinetic. I had to change the capacitor once, he did not wanted to change the watch. Before my memories of my father, he was wearing an Alpina. A four watch life is something that is very hard to imagine for us watch nuts. But obviously it is quite normal for normal people. Of course one has to imagine that once, wrist watches had been luxury articles while the robots have made them very affordable today.

Overhaul

I started today (September 2007) with the intention to change the crystal that was obviously dried out and cracked. My plan was to change the crystal and then have a look at the movement. As usual, the project took a turn into a dead end at some point. But read the comments below yourself please. I am not shy to admit that I need help at this point. I am not sure how to remove the movement. It looks it could only be removed through the front. I will continue this project's documentation. And of course I will only do the disassembly of this movement together with a watch tutor. Disassembling might be possible for me, but assembling it including all the right oiling and adjustment, that should be left to a pro.

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The crystal is obviously "dried out" and full of little cracks. Also it looks as some corrosion has damaged the case

I was at first not sure whether that gunk was rust, but it turned out that "Acier inoxidable" (stainless steel) really did what the name promises

Drilled through lugs made it easy to dump the springbars. There is no reason to be stingy when it comes to springbars. They cost next to nothing ...

While I was looking on how to open the snap-on case back, I suddenly felt the crystal being loose. So it was really easy to lift it out without tools

The replacement crystal will be this 32 mm acrylic crystal. I keep a small stock of all popular sizes at home in order to avoid frequent trips to town

The Japanese opener did a great job. The little groove too. The toothpick was used to remove gunk that would have fallen into the movement

I am quite sure that this is a Venus manual wind chronograph but have not yet found the exact match on the web

However at this stage I was more interested to get the movement out of the case. I spotted these two retaining screws and removed them

Identifying the setting lever screw to remove the crown was easy and had been done just before. Two turns to the left and the crown slid out

But now I was stuck. I did not see any way to remove the movement safely and thus stopped the project. I did however clean the case back thoroughly

Most of the - what looked like rust - went away fairly easily with a toothbrush, soap water and some scrubbing with a tooth pick