Todays featured watch comes from my favourite micro brand, this watch was the one that kicked it all off for Eddie Platts the proprietor of Timefactors. I own many of Eddies watches (seven at the last count) but I don’t have a PRS-1, however I’d love to! This was the first of his designs and was released in 2001 with a production run of only 300. It was called the PRS-1 and is powered by the ETA 2836-2, a 25 jewel 28,800bph automatic movement. The example below came in for a service and to investigate a slipping noise when manually winding.
It’s a shame the back’s been scarred but apart from that it’s in very good shape.
With the back removed we get a glimpse of the 2836 movement. The 2836-2 is basically a higher beat 2824 with a day/date complication and slightly different stem heights.
As ever I remove the autowind bridge and rotor before I uncase the movement.
With these components removed the movement can uncased, as you can the dial has a typical flieger design.
With the dial and handset removed you can see the movement still has its operational calendar disk even though there is no date window on the dial. This happens a lot more than you would think, CWC G10s often had all the date paraphenalia at work under a dateless dial.
The calendar side was soon stripped.
I turned the movement over and made a start on the motion work.
Once fully stripped it was ready for cleaning and inspection.
The winding pinion and clutch was found to be worn which was causing the slipping so these were replaced.
A new mainspring was ordered so I assembled the movement as much as I could without it.
The calendar side was next.
I refitted the dial and hands….
….then recased the movement.
This was as far as I could go so the watch was put away until the mainspring arrived.
Once it was here I cracked on with the assembly.
It was soon ready for the auto mechanism and rotor….
…which were duly fitted.
After a day on test I checked it over and gave it a wind only to be greeted with the rotor spinning furiously inside, I could actually feel it wobble through the case. This normally indicates incorrectly lubricated or dirty reverser wheels but as they’d only just been serviced and lubricated with the recommended Lubeta V105 I was scratching my head a bit! Still stranger things have happened so I stripped the reversers again, re-cleaned and lubricated them but with exactly the same result. Obviously one or both of them had a fault, however turning them with the tweezers point showed neither were sticking or seized. As the tolerances on these reversers are so critical I doubt I’d feel any subtle difference anyway so I ordered a new pair to be on the safe side.
These were fitted and the autowind re-installed and the problem was sorted.
The watch was closed up, a bent springbar was replaced and that’s another one completed. Did I mention I’d love one of these!?
