Converting A Manual Wind To An Automatic

[Chronus]

As an automatic seems to be a manual wind with a weighted rotor and clutch mechanism added on to wind the spring, is it possible to adapt, say, an ETA "Unitas" 6497 and add this to make it into an automatic movement?

This would solve some problems with automatic watches such as many PAMs (092, 024, etc etc) that have a sub-seconds dial at 9. At present, the better reps use the Asian 7750b1, but I feel this one would be cheaper and easier to maintain if this is at all possible.

[ubiquitous]

Chronus-

It's probably not possible- The automatics were designed specifically to be autos- i.e. they have the correct gears and wheels in place to wind the mainspring from the rotor; they have the clutch in place to prevent overwinding, etc. To take a manual wind movement and make it an auto would require fabrication of bridges to facilitate these functions, and would probably not be cheap or easy.

My personal belief is to take a Swiss 7750, remove the functions for 12:00 and 6:00 subdials and leave the running seconds at 9:00 and go that route instead. It's more faithful to the original, and there is no actual engineering that needs to be done to add functions- Only a matter of removing functions

[thomasng]

It's not as easy as it sounds, it would be a bigger waste of time trying to convert it, just replace it with Swiss 7750 and you'll be much better off. Besdies, there's no date function on the 6497, rendering it useless for 024s, 092s, etc.

[Chronus]

I forgot about the date function.

Still it would have been an interesting project, but oh well.

Thanks for responding to an ill-thought out idea!