Omega's worst flop - the Ranchero

hello watch lovers welcome back to the channel my name is Tian and today we have a very rare Omega on the bench it's an Omega Ranchero from 1958. let's see the watch has seen better days the dial has degraded somewhat but it's still in pretty nice shape and we see the movement is loose inside the case there are a couple of reasons for that also looks like that broad Arrow hour hand the loom has been redone it seems because this watch has radium so it's a bit Radioactive this watch belongs to uh Francesco and he wants to keep the watch original as far as possible so the only thing we're gonna actually change on the watch is the loom in the hands shrunts pretty well actually it's a bit low amplitude but that time keeping is pretty extraordinary for a watch that hasn't been serviced for uh decades let's open this baby up and see what we find inside and we find the Omega 267 and a lot of dirt pretty amazing that this watch keeps that good time with this jungle inside it but that is Testament to the quality of this watch as mentioned this watch is from 1958 and the loom on the dial and the hands were a radium which is radioactive and obviously not healthy so to make sure that I don't inhale any of those fragments pieces and also the radon gas under the crystal I use this ventilation system which is very noisy so I turned off all the noise there but with the movement out of the case we see that the dial is in a really nice condition and this is probably where a lot of people would say hey we need to clean the dial and that is not really possible dials are extremely fragile and the second you start touching them especially a dial like this you're gonna start destroying it so we're not gonna do that what we are gonna do is talk about the history of this watch because it is a really peculiar one so in 1957 Omega released three watches that are quite uh legendary by themselves the Omega Speedmaster of course the Seamaster 300 so a professional version of the Seamaster and then also the rail Master which has very strong protection against magnetism these three watches all shared some common design features they had the broad arrow on the hour hand they came with dark dials they also came with lighter dials but the initially dark tiles and they were quite similar looking so they're also turned down the Three Musketeers now those of you who have read The Three Musketeers or seen one of the many movie versions know that yes there are three musketeers but the actual main character of both the movies and the novel is a fourth guy dartania so the year after introducing the Speedmaster sea Master 300 and railmaster oh my God decided to profit on the massive success of those watches with an entry-level watch using the exact same design language and that's the watch we're working on here the Omega Ranchero hand one movement but very similar design to those other three so this one is then sometimes called the fourth musketeer for that very reason now interestingly if you go to the Omega website nowadays you will find a re-issue of those three watches whole term the 1957 heritage what you will not find is the reissue of the Ranchero so what happened to dartanya well ultimately he got married became the captain of the mosquito sorry what happened to The Ranchero what happened is that it was a massive flop it was easily omega's biggest flop it was only produced for two years before being shelved and the reason for its flopping is generally attributed to the name Ranchero which means something like farmhand Farm worker in Spanish and that apparently didn't really go down well in the Spanish-speaking markets which are big and many so uh overall Omega found that this was not really worth pursuing so uh yeah the entry-level watch that was intended to be cheap is actually very expensive nowadays because it is a collector's item so Francesco thought that this watch wasn't really worth much she just asked if I could uh have a look at it but this watch is worth quite a few thousand actually not too bad for a simple uh farmhand and just a small footnote as we have finished the disassembly The Ranchero name was actually reused for a brief while a year or so in limited markets in the 70s but the watch looked very different and that one also flopped so double flop for the Ranchero we're gonna take out the shock settings this watch does have anchor block shock settings and as I've been talking you've been seeing a few close-ups as well of all the dirt it's a lot of dirt in this movement that's been ages since it's been serviced but it has been serviced at some point one of the things that seemed to have happened in that service is that they changed the crown and also removed the crown tube which are both uh not good for an original watch and that is a bit of an issue especially the crown the crown tube we can always make one or find one but the crown this watch had a pretty special crown and given that the watch was only produced for two years in 58 and 59. finding uh an original Crown is really difficult so we're gonna leave the current crown on until we can find the proper ground and then I will update you guys on that we're cleaning out the jewel holes and doing some pre-cleaning there are some other dirty Parts as well that we have to pre-clean before putting them in the washing machine or the cleaning machine rather the mainspring is of the new type does not mean it's new but it does at least been replaced since the 1960s so we're of course gonna run all the movement Parts through our cleaning machine but before doing so I'm gonna pre-clean some of the dirtiest Parts in some Swiss plate though also called rodico that is cheaper than having to uh change all the cleaning liquids which are quite expensive especially this Center wheel that we're doing here was very very dirty now one question a lot of people ask is how can watches become dirty or have hair and stuff inside them I mean it literally said waterproof at the back of the case right so if it's waterproof then there should also be a dirt proof logic would tell us the thing is that no cases are completely waterproof so nowadays they don't use waterproof anymore either let's say you have water resistant to a certain level certain degree and the reason for that is that we need to be able to operate the watch and that's basically then the crown so due to the hole for the ground and the stem uh there will be a way for dirt and debris to enter the watch we're going to talk a little bit more about that later let's now get the movement Parts into the cleaning machine all right let's turn our attention to the case as I mentioned Francesco does not want to have the case restored in any way which I completely agree with okay so it's in very fine condition the watch belonged to his father and he didn't wear it that much apparently so uh we're gonna clean it of course get some Gunk and DNA out of there and there is quite some to get out not as bad as a few other watches were done on this channel but still good for the compost for my wife the case was constructed to be quite water resistant this gasket here is a big reason for that assuming the watch case is intact there are three entry points basically for uh for water for dirt that kind of a thing the main of those three is the crown simply because you drill a hole in the case to be able to put the stem in the crown in there the other two are done through the crystal the gasket there and through the case back of course some watches don't have a case back and there are actual watches that are a radio or set so you don't have to ever open the case and then you can actually make them waterproof but uh Let's uh bit of an exception now let's get the case into the ultrasonic and we can continue discussing a little bit about water resistance foreign goes out to all those lovers of the nail scratching against the Blackboard brace yourselves I discussed in another video about radioactivity and the levels we can expect in Old watches with the radium Loom I will link to that video in the description so this watch is radioactive it's not a watch you want to carry to bed next to your open mouth with a crack in the crystal but for General use the watch is of course fine you don't want to wear it absolutely every day but there is always radiation around us and wearing a watch with their radium occasionally it's perfectly fine we're not going to replace the radium on the dial that is a little bit too invasive and we'll uh probably change the appearance of the watch a little bit more than we like it seems the loom in the hour hand was replaced because it's a very different looking from the minute hand you can see that I'm removing this old loom in the water that's a tip I actually got from one of the viewers of that of the video so thanks for that it's a good tip that way and the radium will be captured in the water so it's not going to be flying around in the dust particles in my workshop I do plan on dying at my bench but not quite yet and yes I will try to get that on video by the way I must say I'm very happy this channel is now I'm pretty much at 40 000 subscribers I must admit it was a childhood dream ever since I was a small boy back in the 1970s to have my own YouTube channel with a thousands of subscribers if you haven't yet subscribed and you like what you see and hear then please do so help me get to fifty thousand that would be very cool all right with the old Loom removed from the hands we're gonna clean it a little bit more off camera and then we're gonna start putting in the new Loop I want to send you loom obviously it is new but we don't want it to look new there are a few different ways of making Loom look old and then basically match the dial that is what we're trying to do what I'm going to do this time is to actually put in a little tiny drop of colored paint model paint and then we'll try to make that match the old burnt out radium Loom on the dialer first when we're mixing the loom we want to make sure it's pretty runny if it's uh too thick it's going to sort of Bulge up in the hands and they're not look good so it has to be quite runny after mixing in the loom we're gonna let it sit for about 20 minutes and then it should have the right consistency if not we can put in some thinner we're going to use this English uniform color which should be a fairly good match to the dial now that we can mix that into the loop this allows us to have the same consistency as a normal loom but then with less brightness and also in a better color of course this big hour hand that area is not that easy to loom actually it's much easier of course when you have a small little slit like on the minute hand and ultimately we managed to cover both and then we're going to let them sit also for about 20 minutes now multitasking is actually not possible we cannot do many things at one time we can only do one thing at one time but given that we're now waiting for our Loom we can start working on the other parts of the movement first thing we're going to do is to put in the shock settings what we're doing here is to bathe the jewels and also the Escape wheel and something called fix up drop that leaves a very thin film on the surface of those parts and that film helped the lubrication stay in place and not creep we're also dipping the jewels the pallets in the pallet Fork and then just to make sure we're going to clean the pivots of the Escape wheel and the pallet Fork so there's no residue left on the others we put a tiny little drop of thin oil into the center of those capstones those flat Jewels if you will steady all right and then we put this uh other part of the shark sitting on top you can see that these two shock settings are actually a little bit different the right one is clearly a bit taller jewel is a little bit thicker and that thicker one then goes into the top of the balance and the balance as we see here and the other one goes on the other side of the main plate all right let's see if the balance all slits freely yeah that looks nice then let's uh go on with the barrel and the main spring so I mentioned initially that this 267 movement is uh part of a legendary family and that families the Omega 30 family named omega-30 because back in those days they just named the movements after the diameter so for the recent Omega 33.3 video I got exactly that question why is the movement named 33.3 so there you have it the Omega third it was the Mainstay of Omega hand one watches for about 40 years I was introduced actually before the second World War and through different iterations it went from being a 15 Joule movement to 17 joules with the Inca block as well they made the center second versions this one is of course the sub seconds version and the third T2 was then renamed the 260 back in the late 1940s and this is the 267. and while I've been talking we managed to get the main spring into the barrel you might remember that there was a lot of play in the bearing in the barrel Bridge you can see that here as well so we're gonna have to do something about that so we're going to use the watchmaker sledgehammer it has two ends one is named destruction and the other Doom and then we're gonna Hammer the living daylight side of this bridge we're gonna hammer it where all our might and that will reduce the whole size that doesn't really sound very manly does it hmm foreign last time I had a video with this type of whole adjustment and the commenter said it sounded like a woodpecker and I think I'm never gonna get that comment again after reducing the whole size with a hammer we are gonna open it a little bit again with a smoothing brooch and then it should be just fitting so that the barrel rotates freely but it doesn't have a lot of play so this family of movements really crushed it in the observatory tests that were very popular and back in the day and the reason for that then of course also the reason why this movement was produced for so many years is that it has a very simple but very very efficient design you might have noticed that the barrel is actually really big compared of course to the size of the movement itself and the balance is also very very very very very big relatively speaking obviously I mean compared to her watchmaker's bicep is almost nothing of course but compared to most watches the balance is really big it covers pretty much the whole radius of the watch movement and a bigger balance lends itself to more precise timekeeping we're over on the dial side of the main plate again and when putting on the Canon pinion it's named the Canon pinion because it sort of resembles a cannon but this one does not have a hole in it if you can guess why this kind of opinion does not have a hole in it let me know in the comments but the Canon pinion is a very important piece because as you saw we press fit it on to the extended Arbor of the center wheel so the center will sticks out through the main plate from the train side and then by linking those two sides with a Canon pinion we can then have the hands move together with the train we use a little bit of radical to hold the setting lever in place while we put in the setting lever screw the reason for that is that the setting never screws are not held in place by the bridge we're going to put a little bit of uh semi-thick oil on this posts the general rule for watch lubrication is that we lubricate everywhere there is some sort of friction this friction is either two pieces rubbing together like in the keyless works here or in rotational friction that part rotates on the post or around another piece of a metal all right let's see if the keyless Works uh as functioning and we can see that the copper plating on the movement is a bit tarnished and that's just because of uh dirt not having been removed in time so it's been allowed to degrade the plating you can also see that the train bridge is uh slightly different shade of copper exactly what that is I'm not sure can be replaced part of course but most likely it's just that it's been rubbed or treated some something more than the other ones another pretty common question I get this which movements are the easiest to learn what should we pair on and the general answer is twofold a large movement and the movement that is running so this kind of movement is actually very easy to work on it's very simple parts are large the screws are mostly quite large it's also not very difficult to find the replacement parts although they are starting to get more expensive as well but if you want to start fixing watches yourself then do start with a watch that is running otherwise it's going to be very difficult to figure out what you have to do to make it run when you're a novice with a pallet fork in place we're going to lubricate one of the pallets itself this red ruby we see here this is the exit palette and what it does it allows the Escape wheel on the left here with those a little bit strange looking teeth it allows the Escape wheel to escape one half tooth at a time and then the entry palette on the other side of the fork does the other have tooth all right moment of truth let's see if we can get the balance properly in and start the watch yeah all right give it a little bit more of a wind and we're gonna oil the remaining Jewel holes and then put it on a demagnetizer and the time grapher and we see that only by cleaning the movement we get a hundred degrees more amplitude which is good we have to adjust the time keeping a little bit and we do that by moving this regulator pin gently moving that back and forth we can adjust the time keeping of the watch so let's see the impact of that I also adjusted the the lift angle on the right the 49 degrees that's the correct number for this watch and we're happy with that so let's then get the hour wheel and the dial and the hands back on let me know if you think the loom in the hands match the dial okay it's difficult to get them the exact same shade but they will also not be the exact same shade if they were completely original but we want them to look at least so close that you're not gonna immediately think that oh that looks strange so I hope that's mission accomplished also the hour hand and the minute hand have the same Loom now so that they don't look different like they did before then we're going to turn the hands around the dial just to make sure that they are aligned and also that they do not touch each other nor the dial nor the second sound all right to the case we need to put in the new Crystal we're going to use our Crystal press for that we find the die that fits the case so that the case is kind of self-centering and then we find the top die that fits the crystal so that it presses the crystal down and in a little bit another way it's going to fit nicely into the case there we go last thing we have to do then is to put in the new gasket this watch is never going to be waterproof and as I mentioned before as well we are actually going to reuse the same crown for the time being I am trying to find the original Crown but that's quite difficult for a model that was only produced for two years some 65 years back but I will try to do that and we'll update everyone afterwards in the meantime I'm going to put in the new gasket and we're also going to adjust the length of the stem a little bit I also wanted to tie back to the waterproofing discussion we had a little bit earlier on this watch is designed to have a crowned tube as you might be able to see now and as you might have seen initially when the movement actually moved a little bit inside the case when we moved the ground is that there's a gap between the stem and the sides of the case in that stem hole so we do need to put in a tube and then that tube will fit into the rubber gasket in the original crown and for now we're just gonna clean up the threads of the stem a little bit and then we're going to shorten it a little bit and then we're going to try to find the proper ground so which sound do you prefer around this one or the ultrasonic I really cannot decide that's why I keep both of them on Loop in my earphones at night so I can properly relax all right with the crown fitting a bit more snugly to the case we're gonna put on the case back again and we're gonna find a nice strap as well before seeing the watch on the wrist I just want to remind everyone that that vintagewatch Services dot EU you will always find more than 100 beautiful vintage watches and as a YouTube subscriber you get 10 off just ask us for the coupon code and there we have it the Omega Ranchero 1958 omega's biggest flop but still a pretty cool watch in my view in its original condition as well apart from the luminance hope you like this video if you did then please subscribe that will really help the channel we'll be back with another video shortly until then Tata

Channel: Vintage Watch Services

Views: 46,816

Keywords: vintage watches, watch repair, watch servicing, mechanical watch, old watch, vintage watch, horology, watchmaker, watch services, watch restoration, watchmaking, old watches, oddly satisfying, relaxing video, legendary watches, mesmerizing videos, wristwatch revival, nekkid watchmaker, red dead restoration, Broad Arrow Omega, Ranchero, Omega 30T

Id: 8aw5Q_nI980

Length: 33min 28sec (2008 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023