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Repairing the unrepairable: Taking apart and fixing my Tourbillon...Success! But I need a part...

capnjazz

Known Member
10/4/15
166
44
28
Sometime last year my IWC Tourbillon started becoming difficult to wind. There was a strong resistance when winding the watch. One day, the resistance to wind became stronger than the strength of the crown stem and the stem snapped mid wind. I cussed a bunch and then the watch sat in on my watch boxÂ* ever since. Till today! I had been contemplating disassembling this watch to see if I could figure out what the winding issue was. I have VERY minimal experience repairing watches via trial and error. Using tools I acquired on amazon, I've disassembled a few watches and successfully repaired minor issues in the past. I've also spent many hours geeking out watching watch repair videos on youtube (the Watch Repair Channel has taught me most everything I knowI. Along with that I spent a fair amount of time last summer studying tourbillon mechanics so I had a pretty good idea of how the mechanism works from the main spring all the way to the tourbillion cage/escapement wheel. Anyway, I figured...how complicated can this Seagull tourbillon movement really be?? Turns out...not very! I'm always reading here on RWI about how no one will service these movements because of their complexity, etc. Frankly, this IMO is a load of BS. I think these watches are honestly VERY serviceable as far as cleaning/oiling and minor repair goes. I suppose the only real hurdle is sourcing spare parts in the case of broken pieces...

My winding issues turned out to be nothing more than the crown wheel gear needing to be oiled... but I didn't discover this until after I had taken everything apart and put it all back together.
That said, I need a new crown stem for this IWC Rep.... If anyone happens to have a broken IWC tourby, I'd gladly purchase the crown stem from you? Or maybe even the whole movement for spare parts. Let me know!

Anyway, though I'd share a few of the photos I took along so that I had some references when re-assembling to showcase some some of the internals. I apologize for any wrong terms I use to refer to parts.

Here is the winding rotor after removal
4wqBYEd.jpg


The back plate after removing the winding rotor. There are 3 lose gears that are part of the automatic winding mechanism that need to be carefully put aside. This photo was for reference for location and gear order.
fsAZzdF.jpg


After removal of the keyless works. There is a TEEENY TINY little wire for the click spring that I didn't get a photo of, but dang...I'm surprised I didn't lose this because I didn't notice it at first. It looked like a tiny little piece hair at first. From here, there are 3 screws holding this back plate on. Once they are removed, you can carefully just lift this plate off. The entire tourbillion cage/escapement mechanism is attached to this plate by thee screws you can see on the left of this plate, making this really simple to deal with.
6ggb4j3.jpg


Viola, here is the other side of the backplate after removal, with the tourbillon cage attached. With enough patience, once should be able to remove the cage, and disassemble this portion as well. I didn't dive into that as there was no point for the winding issue I was tackling, but this shouldn't be any more of an issue than dealing with a balance wheel, escapement wheel, and pallet lever in most any other basic mechanical watch.
mDLtYmn.jpg

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And here is the movement below the back plate with the tourbillon removed. From here I removed the mainspring barrel (on the right side) as I thought there would be an issue with it that was resisting winding. Unfortunately there was nothing wrong with it. I didn't get any photos of that part removed. The little gear I highlighted with the red arrow and circle is the second hand pinion. This gear needs to actually be removed and attached to the back plate (that we removedÂ*in the last pic) between a little spring and a jewel. The second hand just needs to be removed and this then gear will fall right out. It took me a bit to figure this out when I was trying to re-attach the back plate. I've highlighted this in the next few pictures.
CqnYM1W.jpg


The spring where the second hand pinion needs to be wedged between...
O22b6PT.jpg

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Gear removed from the main movement, and inserted beneath the spring on the back plate. When re-assembling the back plate later on, the hardest part of this entire process was getting this pinion gear to go back into the jewel on the main movement plate... This took a lot of patience and about 10 minutes of me trying to get everything lined up.
4SvL2kI.jpg


From this point on, the rest of the movement is just really basic motion train gears that any watchmaker can deal with. I didn't disassemble any further as I had taken apart all of the stuff related to the winding mechanisms and found nothing wrong. As I was re-assembling all the winding gears, I tested the winding train, one gear at a time. everything was working fine until I finally attached the last crown wheel... then I couldn't wind. I loosened the screws...and tested, it wound freely! Turns out, this gear is actually 2 pieces. The center part held down by 2 screws, and the outer ring gear that rotates around this plate. I proceeded to use a needle to apply a spec of mineral oil to the inside of the gear ring, and the outside edge of that little inner plate. Screwed it back down tight and tested it again. Winds up very smoothly now! If only I'd have realized this was the issue before disassembling as much of the watch as I did...or maybe even before breaking the damn crown stem! :(
SmDhWMz.jpg


Hope you guys were able to get something out of this, or at the very least, enjoyed seeing a bit more of the tourbillion internals. Again...if anyone happens to have an IWC tourby crown stem I could buy off you, let me know! For now I have a working watch with no convenient way to wind/set the time.

Cheers!
 
Last edited:

Mr Gatsby

Active Member
17/4/17
306
88
28
Good for you bro. Nice work. I'm w you and have never understood why these could not be serviced. I use Domi a lot and I'm pretty sure if I sent him one he could in fact service it no issues. That said not that I have seen a lot of stuff fail or have issues on these, but the ones I have seen that do have issues are auto's. My last few iwc toubys I got were the hand wind. Is there a difference?? Not sure. I guess time will tell, but I think if we can manage to get access to parts for seagull toubys I'm e u that I believe these can be fixed and serviced all the time.

Sent from the RWI App
 

2fake4u

Put Some Respect On My Name
20/9/16
3,037
475
83
Nice work. Now to get some Mobeius oils for those gears
 

capnjazz

Known Member
10/4/15
166
44
28
Nice work. Now to get some Mobeius oils for those gears

What grade is recommended? I was looking around on amazon last night and saw a few different kinds. I'm wondering if I could also get away with soldering the stem together, though I have doubts about the strength of that kind of fix. I have a stem from an old fossil watch that looks fairly similar, but is too long, but I'm thinking I could probably modify it and attach the grown to it and possibly have that work? I contacted InTime but they said they can't source any spare stems :(
 

capnjazz

Known Member
10/4/15
166
44
28
Thanks, was scary but also a fun discovery process. I dont know that anyone has ever tackled disassembling these movements before? At least, not that I've ever seen. Since the watch was already 'broken' I figured...what the hell? Worst I could do was just end up with a still broken watch!
 

rlxsub

Horology Curious
15/2/17
14
5
3
See my post in the other thread, mine also had this issue and after greasing the crown tube it was resolved.
 

eddy@manu

Banned member, the goat does not approve
Banned
5/1/17
905
378
0
Awesome read & strip down of your movement, mate! Self-Made-Man rockz, respect!
Check this out for lubrication: [video]http://www.ofrei.com/page434.html[/video]
Maybe you can find some helpful information.

Sorry this is a security web site? Because ask me security code of Credit card by email


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk
 

capnjazz

Known Member
10/4/15
166
44
28
Sorry this is a security web site? Because ask me security code of Credit card by email


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk

Sounds like you have some kind of malware installed that's hijacking the connection in your browser. Ofrei is a watchmaker supplier. Coincidentally they are locate in Oakland, CA where I live just a couple miles away. I've gone to their warehouse in person before to purchase a new crystal for an old Omega once.