The case of the quartz retrofit

[Archer]

Ben had asked me to look at two of his watches recently, and one of these was a very nice vintage LeCoultre dress watch – a family piece. As you may know, LeCoultre watches were for the US market, with movements made by Jaeger-LeCoultre but they were adjusted and cased in the US to avoid duties imposed by the US government that were intended to protect the domestic watch industry.

Ben had relayed that some time ago a family member had this watch converted from mechanical to quartz.

Now for a watch collector, this sort of conversion sounds like something you would question the sanity of, but back when quartz was introduced attitudes were different. A technology had come along that would simply blow away the accuracy of most mechanicals and was very easy and inexpensive to maintain in comparison. I certainly don’t fault the decision as it was a practical one, and not based from a “collector” point of view. Ben was interested in possibly converting this watch back to a mechanical movement, and he agreed to let me post my findings on this rather unusual project.

I received the watches last week and began my review of the LeCoultre. Here is Ben’s watch:



Very nice black gloss dial (making it hard to photograph!), 35mm 14k gold case, gold hands, and a classic dress watch appearance. The first thing I did was crack it open – it’s a snap together case, and the movement comes out the front.



Flipping the movement over, you can see the movement that is in the watch now…



Here is the case – has been modified slightly to accept the squared quartz movement…



So where to start on this project?

The first thing was identifying the movement that should be in there. Ben did not have any records of this so I spent some time searching the internet for similar looking LeCoultre watches. I stumbled upon this watch up for auction:



Looks very similar to Ben’s, but also made me think more than a movement swap had been done! Looking at this watch, it uses a sub-seconds caliber, where Ben’s watch was a sweep seconds. But looking at the dial on Ben’s LeCoultre, the 6 marker was shorter than the rest, like the one in the auction watch is. Here is a closer shot of the dial from Ben:



The auction watch was fitted with a Jaeger-LeCoultre Cal. 480CW as shown here:



I believe this was the movement that was originally in Ben’s watch, and when the quartz retrofit was done, the dial was refinished with the hole for the sub-seconds pinion filled before it was repainted. I wanted to confirm this so I contacted someone I know of who is an expert on vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre and his first thought was that the correct movement was the 480CW based on the size of the opening in the case that the movement fits into. So this was great information and one step closer to a solution, but with added complexity. Now in addition to finding a correct movement for the watch, I had to find a seconds hand for it. I had considered just putting the hole in the dial again and not putting the cross hair marks back on so a dial refinish was optional at this point.

I went looking for a movement next. With some searching I found one on eBay, in “as is” condition for $350. The seller said it needs a service, and if they actually admit that, then it certainly does. So I decided I would take the quartz movement off and have a closer look at the dial. That’s when this whole thing went bad…

Since the dial feet (pegs) would not have fit the quartz movement as they did the original, I suspected that they had been removed and the dial had been attached to the quartz movement with something called “dial dots” which are small adhesive bits that essentially keep the dial and movement together. Well, when I popped out the battery I saw the real problem – the dial has been completely glued to the whole plate of the quartz movement.



In the photo above you can see the sheen of the glue under the area where the battery goes, and in fact the indices have also been glued in place instead of being properly soldered in place (not sure how well that will hold up over time). Trying to remove this movement without ruining the dial would be a major challenge. A dial refinish was now required, and possibly a whole new dial would be needed.

I ran this situation by Ben as the potential costs were adding up and rather than pursue the conversion back to mechanical I will see if the quartz movement will run with a new battery installed. If the quartz movement is bad, then it’s pretty much toast without putting a lot into it since the movement can’t easily be replaced or removed for servicing.

So what looked like a fairly practical conversion back to mechanical turned into an expensive proposition. It’s a shame that this conversion wasn’t done with more consideration for the future – either mechanical or quartz.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers, Al

[Ben]

Well, firstly, I appreciate Al's skilled eye and assessment of this LeCoultre. Plus, I'm sure it's cool for Al to be able to see different watches and play with them.

The "family member" in question was my father who inherited the watch after his father died in 1964. This may very well have been my grandfather's "retirement" watch as he retired less than a year before he died. My father, with his mother's permission I'm told, asked her if he could have it converted to quartz (I don't know what year that was - but probably in the early to mid- 1970's).

As Al mentioned, it was probably a sporty thing to do in the 1970's, but I really wish that the watchmaker had talked him out of it. Even though the watch really isn't my style, I'd have worn for dress - or at least been able to sell it and apply the funds to something I would wear.

Hell, with the way the economy is going I may have to melt it down and sell the gold!

Thanks Al!

-Ben

[atomic]

Quite the story there. A shame it was converted in the first place. Makes you wonder how many other mechanicals suffered the same fate back when quartz was sooo fashionable.