Sea Dweller losing gaining 1 min per day?

[Caveman73]

Hi guys,

Newbie here. Bought my first replica, a Sea Dweller with the 2836 movement from Idol Replicas. The watch looks good and seems to be a good likeness (apart from the missing bar code on side) but I have found taht the watch is over 1 minute fast, and gains a minute every day! Is this to be expected from a replica? I undertood that this mechanism was the best of the lot, so I am disappointed with this.

Can anyone advise?

Cheers,

Mart.

[deniz21]

you should get a girlfriend :rofl: :rofl:

i mean come on, one minute is not the benchmark, but not that bad for a rep.. i think a little fine adjustment at the movement and you will be very fine. a good eye and a small screwdriver is all you need for that

try the search im sure here are some posts who discribe the fine adjustment on watches

deniz

[preacher62]

I diagree with deniz21. One minute per day is terrible. I would wear it for 2 - 3 weeks daily before doing anything. It might settle down to a more reasonable rate. A 2836-2 movement, whether an Asian copy or gen ETA should be able to achieve +- 6 seconds per day or better. I have 7 watches with these particular movements and I try to get from -4 to +6. These mechanical movments are not quartz movements and do not perform like that. If extreme accuracy is a requirement for daily wear, get a TAG or Seiko.

[Brightight]

Don't forget it also depends how you put your watch down when you're not wearing it, such as overnight. Rolex instructions are as follows -

SIMPLE REGULATING

If your watch loses or gains a few seconds per day (remember, there are 86,400 seconds in 24 hours), you can correct it without expert aid. The rate of a watch varies slightly depending upon its position. Take it off at night and place it as follows:

TO GAIN A FEW SECONDS:

Lay your watch flat with the dial uppermost

TO LOSE A FEW SECONDS:

Lay the watch vertically with the winding-button downwards

TO LOSE RATHER MORE SECONDS:

Lay the watch vertically with the winding-button uppermost

[Caveman73]

Thanks for the replies guys. Actually I wear my watch 100% of the time, and don't remove at night. Do you think this is making it run fast?

I will try removing at nigh and laying on it's side as recommended.

Thanks!

Mart.

[rol_man]

I agree with Preacher, let it run in for a couple of weeks, this will help the movement "settle" in. If it continues to run fast, you can attempt to regulate the movement yourself or find a rep friendly watchsmith that could perform this. Have added a link below to a previous thread addressing regulation of different types of movements.

[TeeJay]

The first Submariner I bought had a Swiss movement, and that gained at least 45 seconds a day (at the time, I didn't know how to adjust a watch's timing myself) If your watch is consistently gaining a minute a day, then it is just a matter of popping the back and adjusting the movement accordingly, and that should resolve the issue /) For what it's worth, I now only buy watches with Asian movements, and have been able to adjust them to +0.5 seconds a day... Welcome to the party

PS The barcode is just a sticker, not a feature of the design

[freddy333]

At the very least, your watch needs to be regulated (by a watchmaker). Regardless of the marketing coming from sellers, the movements in most rep watches are used &/or unserviced & typically arrive with a number of problems, whether they are immediately apparent or not. Contact member Ziggyzumba or a local (rep friendly) watchmaker & have the movement overhauled (disassembled, cleaned, oiled & regulated). Then, you should get 5-7 years (which is the recommended time interval between overhauls for most mechanical watches) of accurate, trouble-free service.

[fakemaster]

I don't get bugged until it goes over 30. Leave it go for a bit as suggested. Sometimes it's as simple as dust getting in there.

[plaifender]

Thanks for the replies guys. Actually I wear my watch 100% of the time, and don't remove at night. Do you think this is making it run fast?

I will try removing at nigh and laying on it's side as recommended.

Thanks!

Mart.

You sleep with your watch???

[preacher62]

Don't forget it also depends how you put your watch down when you're not wearing it, such as overnight. Rolex instructions are as follows -

SIMPLE REGULATING

If your watch loses or gains a few seconds per day (remember, there are 86,400 seconds in 24 hours), you can correct it without expert aid. The rate of a watch varies slightly depending upon its position. Take it off at night and place it as follows:

TO GAIN A FEW SECONDS:

Lay your watch flat with the dial uppermost

TO LOSE A FEW SECONDS:

Lay the watch vertically with the winding-button downwards

TO LOSE RATHER MORE SECONDS:

Lay the watch vertically with the winding-button uppermost

@Brightight - Thanks for this post. Someone posted, some months ago, a scan of the little card that used to be included with all Rolex mechanical watches, but I lost track of it. Might have been you...if so, please post it again. Everyone that uses these reps needs to know this info.

MT

[Caveman73]

Thanks for all the helpful replies guys, what a friendly forum!

Getting the watch serviced sounds good. Can anyone recommend someone in the UK?

Cheers,

Mart.

[FxrAndy]

You sleep with your watch???

you write that as if it was strange to sleep with a watch on, and always charge the lume before you turn the lights off, and set an alarm so you can check the lume at intervals through the night, whats wrong with that?

@ OP your watch needs at the least regulating by a competent watch smith, best is to check for the olde watch smiths shope local to you and ask there if they have experience with a 2836 and would they work on a well made replica? DO NOT GO IN TO AN AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTOR, like goldsmiths ect

[Jkay]

It could be that your watch has little or no oil in it. This will make it run fast. Have it looked at after it's "settled" for a short time.

[Caveman73]

Quick update.

I've started taking my watch off at night and lying it as instructed to make it lose the minute or so that it's gained over the day. Unfortunately now the watch loses steam and stops completely mid morning. This is the third replacement I've had from Idol Replicas and I'm just fed up now. Pretty close to binning the watch and starting just again.

Who supplies the best Sea Dweller replica and which is the best mechanism to get, Asian 2836 or Swiss? With my new watch I will be looking for:

- A new clean pearl

- Crisp and black (not brown) Rolex logo stamped to inside of clasp

- Deep and crisp numbers on the bezel

- Centred numbers within calendar

- A mechanism that works and keeps time reasonably!

Who sells the best/Ultimate Sea Dweller copy?

Many thanks,

Mart.

Edited June 15, 2010 by Caveman73

[plaifender]

Quick update.

I've started taking my watch off at night and lying it as instructed to make it lose the minute or so that it's gained over the day. Unfortunately now the watch loses steam and stops completely mid morning. This is the third replacement I've had from Idol Replicas and I'm just fed up now. Pretty close to binning the watch and starting just again.

Who supplies the best Sea Dweller replica and which is the best mechanism to get, Asian 2836 or Swiss? With my new watch I will be looking for:

- A new clean pearl

- Crisp and black (not brown) Rolex logo stamped to inside of clasp

- Deep and crisp numbers on the bezel

- Centred numbers within calendar

- A mechanism that works and keeps time reasonably!

Who sells the best/Ultimate Sea Dweller copy?

Many thanks,

Mart.

Don't bin the watch. If you indeed have an ETA 2836 in it.. It would be well worth it to service the watch and have it running perfectly for possibly the next ten years. The movement you have is not a bad movement, but the chinese often put older unserviced movements in our watches that may have been sitting on shelves, and/or in an unprotected environment. I know it's annoying.. but I know of NO well-known dealers that truthfully service all their watches before shipment. If you're going to buy an ETA movement it's worth the value of the movement that you have it serviced (dismantled, cleaned, oiled and reassembled) Just my opinion.

[Nanuq]

This thread reminds me of Mark Twain's essay. Enjoy!

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow -- regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him -- tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator MUST be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch AVERAGED well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -- a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner.

He said:

"She makes too much steam -- you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!"

I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.

My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.

[Jkay]

[Caveman73]

Sorry mate, were you smokin' sumthin?

M.

[Powertrip]

Necro-post of Doooom! (because Mark Twain should be read by all). And also because I wouldn't want anyone who answered my noobie questions to think I wasn't toiling over the tomes of past knowledge to find my answers before asking ;-)

This thread reminds me of Mark Twain's essay. Enjoy!

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow -- regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him -- tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator MUST be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch AVERAGED well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -- a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner.

He said:

"She makes too much steam -- you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!"

I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.

My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.

[panerai153]

Lots to be gained from reading Twain, not just entertainment. You can summerize that essay into one phrase, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!! Or if it does need fixing, try to find a watchmaker who's sign out front doesn't read "Watches repaired, Horses shod, Plow points sharpened"

In this case your watch is broke and it does need fixing. Take the sage advice of the older members (Not necressarily in age,, but most assuredly in experience) and take your watch to a competent watchmaker, get the movement cleaned oiled and regulated. It will be good to go for quite a long time. What you said about it not running through the night when it's off your wrist, is and indiction that it's probably suffering from the D&D's (Dry and dirty). It should have a power reserve of somewhere around 40 hours if it's fully wound.

Trashing the watch and replacing it with another replica may not solve your problem, you have no guarantee that the new one will not be D&D as well.

When I buy a replica, I factor in two things price wise. First is to have the movement serviced, and the second is to have the dial and hands lumed properly. I'm a lume fanatic, and I have not yet seen a rep with factory lume that is even remotely close to factory lume on the genuine that it is a replica of.