Service and repair of a rusty valjoux 7750 based Breitling watch

start I'm going to work on this Breitling today with a bow do 7750 movement as you can see is Rusted very badly so I'm going to strip this down and D rust it now the idea is is to keep the cost down at this service as much as possible because the parts can be quite expensive I'm going to clean as much as I can and replace parts only if I need to as so as you can see I'm starting off by removing the hands and I'll remove the dial you'll see what damage is done underneath the dial to remove the dial you just undo these little latches on the side of the movement here they just hinge outwards so I'm carefully prized in the dial away so luckily the calendar ring is not damaged if I remove the rest of the calendar mechanism as clay covers the calendar jumping spray jumpers and the spring notice I'm using pegwood to stop the spring from pinging off and just removing these calendar jumpers I can remove the date ring now now the rest of the motion work and calendar works are underneath this big plate so I need to unscrew that there's free screws here see there's a little bit of rust on the plate here I think we should be able to remove that later without having to replace this okay now with the plate off we can see that the keyless work has not escaped damage so there's going to be some parts there that'll need replacing my how that hair got in there apparently this watch got rusty because the wine that was left in the unscrewed position and the gentleman who owned it got pushed in a swimming pool quite an unlucky day really I'm using hand levers to remove this friction opinion okay now back on the other side of the watch and we need to remove the automatic works it's quite rusted in there but not so bad that the screws aren't unscrewing so that's a good thing I'll replace all these screws so they look a bit nasty as you can see the a lot of water accumulated around this area and as it dried obviously oxidized and caused all this rust that's the returned hammer and the spring I would normally have taken that off first this spring now the our recording wheel there and the the chronograph running wheel both had their pivots broken at the top so they will be replaced just removing the operating lever here when we're moving this spring just make a note of which direction it goes is when you put it back it can go back in either direction but there's only one correct direction so I'm gently prising this plate away see what damage we might have underneath this so you can see miraculously the watch is actually ticking once I removed the chronograph work so obviously that's where the main damage was okay there will be a bit of staining but I can clean this up the looks of it so in case you didn't notice the screw was broken there and you may notice in the the old part the screw is still left in there so this part will have to be replaced start removing the the balance and the escapement and see what it looks like under the main plate so these pallets are damaged they'll be replaced mainplate is secured with free screws the barrel a blow was stuck in the main plate so I'm just pushing it down with the pegwood so it doesn't rip out all these upper wheels okay let's have a look okay so this have third wheel and need to be replaced fourth wheel actually looks okay so we the escape wheel looks okay as well okay finally we're going to where I'm going to remove the keyless work it's quite a bit of damage in there so I'll just replace these the winding pinion clutch wheel should be I'll clean up the rest setting lever needs a bit of encouragement to come out so yeah so what stripped down may my best might be my bench very messy so now the work starts what to junk and what to clean up a lot at the rhodium-plated parts the rust is not really set in deep and so whilst there may be a bit of staining I should be able to get rid of a lot of that rust and some of the wheels have got their pivots broken so I'll just replace those are pretty much replaced nearly all the screws that have been affected by rust because the last thing I want is for a screw head to break off causing me more work on the whole not so bad looks worse than it is so here we are cleaned up the main plate and I've cleaned the the oscillating wait let's just show you how I did that and one little bit of staining underneath here but it's perfectly functional and yeah this ideal to keep the original way if possible as it has the Breitling on there this is how I did it so what I do is I soak the the parts that I need in in bicarbonate of soda once they've soaked for a while give them a nice little scrub with a toothbrush I'm making sure that I'm doing this carefully and I've removed any springs and sometimes some of these plates have embedded Springs so those have to be removed first any stubborn little bits then I can get the peg wood in there and start chipping away with the peg wood because this is prior to cleaning in the watch cleaning machine as you can see is quite a big difference from when I first remove the parts from the movement so with some of these metal parts it's actually better to use a fiberglass scratch brush and as you can see the the rust is any surface rust it's not eaten into the into the metal luckily so some of these parts are salvaged but as you can see I've had to order a hell of a lot of parts nevertheless so here we go with putting the thing back together let's see how it goes so I'm using b5 oil here on the on the hack and of course we start with the escape wheel the second wheel and the third wheel and now the the great wheel so now with all the wheels in place I can replace the main plate I'm just holding the main plate under tension with my pegwood so that I can locate the wheels you some Eiling here with d5 and the great way allow you is also d5 so here I'm using ninety ten on the second wheel and the third wheel and the escape wheel and using v5 there there's a bit more b5 on the at all intermediate wheel on the rim honkers the ratchet wheel and the clickspring which I removed due to cleaning the plate earlier I wouldn't normally remove the clickspring when I'm servicing this one so on to the keyless work start with the winding pinion clutch make sure the clutch goes between the hack d5 and the groove lubricated up the stem and replace that and with the setting lever number B return ba or yoga and here replacing the rocking bar now assemble the set and leave of spring so now at boiling the train wheel and again I've used d5 for the barrel Arbor and the Great Wheel and the third seconds and escape wheel I'm using 90/10 there's a minute recording jumper spring going back in place and when I'm servicing the 7750 usually I wouldn't remove this spring however had to do a lot of cleaning as you may recall and so it warranted removing the spring obviously I didn't want to damage it so our new set of pallets going in there nice and shiny now let's see if the the watch has a heartbeat so put put in the balance back in place so that's looking quite lively let's see if we can boil the end stones you like using 90/10 to all these n stands now this is called a driver can opinion and it can seize up and get very very tight potentially causing damage so or when causing damage when you tried to set the hand and so it's important to get the lubrication right on this and using 9501 mobius 9 501 and as is recommended and but it's important to get it right and to test it otherwise teeth can break on the minute wheel our wheel I've been fairly liberal with the grease on this but I'm just removing any excess with my Roddick oh then now on with constructing the chronograph side so now I'm just greasing up the coronagraph cam put t5 on that post a little bit d5 on the shoulder and fitness hammer cam jumper this is the debt and for the the our hammer I'm just replacing the spring for their reversing wheel and I'm replacing the 60-second oscillating pinion you you you I'm turning the cam to make sure that the chronograph is technically in it's engaged position which allows me to fit the chronograph runner wheel the cams on the chronograph run a wheel and the minute recording wheel those are lubricated with d5 now I've not been able to show the lubrication of every single piece of this watch as I've been recording however I do advise you to if you're going to be working on a value 7750 and you want to know more about the lubrication points then you can download the server sheets from the ETA website they're freely available and they have all the information about what oils and what greases to use in the right places down with the hammer so this is the cover pay for all the chronograph components it's important not to just press that straight down but rather to hold it with these a peg word whilst you locate all the pivots and make sure everything moves freely before screwing into place as these place have a tendency to move whilst you're screwing the screws down it's useful to keep holding it with peg wood as I'm doing whilst you're screwing them down so I'm just replacing the springs right back over now and on to the motion work I'm using d5 here you're interested again with the cam on the our recording wheel here I've used d5 it to lubricate it this is a tricky spring to get into place takes a little bit of practice sometimes I find it useful to use peg wood to hold one end flat whilst I use my tweezers to stretch the spring over the the upper end once it's in place I'll quickly put the cover plate on so it doesn't all ping off in 30 directions and the three securing Springs go back at Springs the free securing screws go back in place I'll lubricate the calendar jumpers with I don't know why they put the our jumper in these movements when there's no our disk they always seem to do that in any case I do lubricate the the V point where the jumper makes contact with their calendar wheel or calendar ring we have a little grease there's the rapid date changer not sure what the official name is for it I'll look it up that's all looking very good great so now we can just check on the dial in the hands and give this movement a test I'm just trying to find 12 o'clock midnight here indicated of course by the calendar ring turning over there we found it so now leave the winder in the out position that stops the balance from working put on the hands right and we have one revived watch movement so it's not perfect the only perfect way of doing it would be either to replace the movement or to replace a lot more of the parts than I did obviously we've saved a lot of money this way so I'm fitting a new oscillating wait bolt I have another video showing how to do this properly so if you want to search through so once the oscillating weight is fitted here we now have a completed movement and it's looking good so we put back in the case a lot better than when we started anyway let's put it that way Ashley keeps very good time now as well which is always a bit of a bonus especially with a chronometer so I hope you've enjoyed that and thanks for watching

Channel: Watch Repair Channel

Views: 3,445,762

Rating: 4.8443804 out of 5

Keywords: watch repairs, watch repair, watch service, mark lovick, watchrepairtalk.com, watchservices.co.uk, breitling watch, rusty watch, remove rust, valjoux 7750, 7750, chronograph, rusted watch, water damage, eta, watch movement, repair chronograph

Id: BesSK67Mzms

Length: 39min 53sec (2393 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 18 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/nima-t]

Absolutely captivating. Thanks so much for that. Makes me appreciate even more my Vacheron and Tiffany watches.

[u/Scruby_d]

Title may need to be rephrased

[u/ucunbiri]

Are those scratches due to rust removing procedure or watch parts' own movements?

[u/Pondis]

That was anxiety inducing. Fascinating though