Search the Community

So in the interests of advancing the hobby, I attempted my first real (i.e. not just resizing the bracelet) DIY watch repair and I've screwed the pooch. I have (had?) a Chopard Mille Miglia GTXL chrono with the grey face and the "12" and "6" on the crystal with a chrono that wouldn't stop running. I took it to a local repair shop that came recommended who held onto it for 6 months and from whom I eventually got it back in a worse state than before, apparently because they could not source the necessary parts. I decided my best bet at this point was a movement swop and so I ordered a replacement movement (A07.211, basically oversize A7750 from what I understand) from Joshua and a watch toolkit from Watch Bitz in Australia. Parts and tools in hand, yesterday I proceed to disassemble the watch to attempt the swop. Things went OK until it came to the hands. Under the loupe it became clear that either I or the repair shop had not been as gentle as I thought with the hand extractor and the hands are quite scratched up. But my problems are worse than that. If I try to remount them, the hour and minute hands seems to spin freely. It almost looks like the pin in the new movement is slightly thinner than the holes in the hands. The problem with the subdial hands is even greater: The pins (I'm probably using the wrong terminology) coming up from the movement are far thinner, and seem to have had some sort of spacer tube on them in the old movement. In my ignorance, I've lost two of the three spacers (one in the disassembly, and one because it went SPROING out of my tweezers), and frankly I'm not clear how to reinstall them anyway. I could give up here but there's not much learning in that. I'm going to contact Joshua to see if I can order a new set of hands and tubes(?), but if anyone here can help with correct terminology (so I know what to ask for) and installation tips (to avoid screwing up again) of the little spacer tubes on the subdials I'd really appreciate it. And a last question - the face was glued to the old movement - any tips on what sort of glue to use for this application? Thanks!