Does anyone know how to get the mechanism out of this rep?!

[Tommy Tom]

I've got a cheap and cheerful Patek Phillipe rep which has lasted me many years and was one of my first. it has a special place in my heart.

I recently removed the stem to work on the watch and now of course can't lock the bloody thing back in place. There is no point in having the keyless works repaired as it would only cost $80 to get a new one, so I want to try and fix it myself. This should be a simple case of removing the dial and mechanism and seperating them to get to the keyless works....but it's never that easy is it.

I have tried to remove the mechanism and it doesn't seem to come out of the back. Does anyone have any experience of these cheaper reps?

It looks like the mechansm has to come out of the front as the dial would fit through the back, but I wanted to see if anyone else had any experience of this before I remove the crystal. I shall try and take some close up of the back opened up.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[underwriter]

You’ll probably have done it by now or binned the watch, but if anyone’s interested: the movement does come out the front. My father and I have several of these PPs between us and his keyless works screwed up recently, so I took the opportunity to fix it using the knowledge I gained on this forum.
His PP has a solid metal ring which seems to be press fitted in the case instead of the normal high-quality plastic movement holder that mine has. So, you need to get the bezel holding the crystal off. To do this you’ll need the thinnest, but sturdiest razor blade you can find, if that’s not a contradiction! I used a blade from one of those plastic knives that you slide the blade in and out of, the ones with the snap-off sections. You need to slide it in-between the crystal bezel and the case and move the blade up and down and the bezel should start to come away, if you’re careful (and depending on how firmly the bezel is fitted) you should be able to do this without marking the case. Use the same motion and move the blade round the bezel until it pops off, the dial and movement can then be pushed out from the other side. Watch out though, as they sometimes put double-sided sticky tape on the underside of the dials, so if the dial and movement won’t come out easily (and you’ve removed the stem) that’ll be why.
I managed to fix the keyless works on the watch no problem, but putting it back together the date wouldn’t change by the advance on the crown, and when I fitted it all back into the case, although advancing the time would change the date, the date wheel seemed loose, the date would move if you tapped the watch so after messing with it for ages I decided to just fit a new movement which was only £5.95+VAT from Cousins: problem solved.
The hardest part of the whole thing was getting the crystal bezel back on, you may find you need a case press. I did manage to press the bezel back on by hand on to the watch I had, twice, but I had to push with all my might!

The two different case interiors, you can also see that I have the same model PP as Tommy Tom, I've just received a new movement for it:

A pic of my two favorite PPs, same model, one with Arabic numbers and one with Roman numerals:

I love the back of the Arabic one, gold marks:

A look at the back of the Roman: