Gucci Bangle Watch

This watch belongs to my mother; it was a gift from my father many years back- a Christmas gift I believe, although I may be mistaken. She delivered me the watch along with a few others for replacement batteries. Sadly, I didn’t have the needed power cell on hand and had to place an order for it. Instead of twiddling my thumbs while I waited for  the delivery I decided to give the watch a good clean.

My mother has an appreciation for watches and as such has some fine time pieces but I believe this is her favorite. This watch was sold by Gucci in the early nineties and has a neat feature- the colored bezel is removable and can be changed to match or accent the owner’s outfit. Included with the watch at the time of sale were a dozen bezels of differing colors, each threaded so that you could remove one and replace it with another at your whim. The original bezel was green with a red pinstripe but it has been lost to time, fortunately she has others to chose from.

Now, I don’t do many quartz watch services because electronics are not my strong suit but since this watch was running fine (when fitted with a good power cell) I elected to do a simple cleaning and lubrication.

The caseback is a snap-on job which came away fairly easily with a bit of elbow grease. Inside is an ETA 980.003 seven jewel quartz movement which is secured in an inner case and free from the elements.

I found a note on the inside of the caseback indicating that a watchmaker or jeweler was inside in November of ’99. I’m still assuming the oil in the jewels in the original stuff though.

Quartz movements are pretty simple- the only thing that usually gives me trouble is the keyless works and this job was no exception. I struggled to figure out how to free the stem from the movement (which is necessary in order to remove the movement from the case). I poked around for about fifteen minutes without success before electing to break the movement down in situ.

Out first came the battery followed by the Electronic Module which revealed the Train Wheel Bridge and its four jeweled bearings.

Removing the Train Wheel Bridge revealed the Going Train.

With that out of the way I could break down the keyless works and remove the stem; all that’s left is to remove the top plate fro the case.

Through the cleaner all the bits go (not the electronic bits!) and it’s time to assemble things in reverse order. ETA specifies Moebius 9034 and Microgliss D5 oil for the pivots and Jismaa 124 for the high friction areas- I follow their recommendations.

I only snapped a few pictures of the reassembly as there wasn’t much to see- I’m used to working on some really distressed watches! It’s easy to see that cleaning was warranted.

During reassembly I figured out how to release the stem though- that will be helpful if I ever need to replace the crown or service the watch again in the future.

I cleaned the dial up with distilled water and a cotton swab…

And the case was run through the ultrasonic cleaner.

I also ordered a replacement bezel- the original green one with the red pinstripe. They’re hard to come by but now can be had second hand.

Lastly a new crystal was ordered and pressed into place. The old one had a scratch on it and being mineral crystal it wouldn’t make sense to try and polish it out.

Now it’s time to get back to the chronographs…