The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Hi,
Went through my seawolf manual, it says not to change time/date from 8pm to 3am, why is that?
has something to do with the movement??

Thanks..

Yep....All kind of gears are in motion....mess up the watch,so they say.

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"In the end there can be but one"

There are a lot of threads on this that you can find with the search function.

Essentially the date change mechanism moves to engage with the running train (that operates the hands). That engagement then causes the date to change and the date change mechanism then disengages from the running train. When the gear wheels are partially meshed any manual operation of the date change gears (or winding time backwards)can bend or break the tips of the gears which can lead to expensive repairs.

thanks for the info, so incase i haven't worn my watch since few days & if the hand gets stuck at 9pm what should i do if i decide to wear the watch & correct the time?

Actually that's a great question. I would love to hear what others did but when it happen to me I wound my watch forward to the correct time and then set the date. I understand that back-winding or setting the date in the time range from 2000 to 0300 is the issue.

Don't take my word on the proper process to follow. I'm just sharing what I did when I ran in to it. It seemed reasonable. There are guru's here that may have a different answer.

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Collection is changing too quickly to keep up on...

Forward the time out of the danger zone to say 6, is what I do. Don't reverse the time. Manually wind the watch. Forward the time until the date changes over if it has only been one day and set the correct time. If you are several days off, forward the time until the date changes and you are at 6am, then forward the date to the correct date, and set to the correct time mindful of am and pm. Remember you watch movement doesn't "know" if it is am or pm - you have to get it in the correct 12 hour part of the day.

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SHARKMAN

Manually forward the time until you're out of the danger zone. You can turn the hands forward, just can't set the date between 9pm and 3am.

Is this only in Breitlings?

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End of Discussion.

No it is ALL automatic watches except a few movements with quick change dates, like the caliber B01

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SHARKMAN

here is what i tell people, unscrew the crown, pull it all the way out, no matter what the hands say, move them to 630, get them both in the bottom of the dial, and out of the way. push the crown in and give it 30 or so winds, then pull it out to the second position to set the date, and set it to THE DAY BEFORE, today is the 24th, i would set the watch date to the 23rd, them pull the crown all the way out and manually go past 12, have the date change, and now you know its am, go past 12 to pm, if t happens to be pm time. if you always do it that way, you won't mess up the watch or the am/pm

My AD's instruction when I bought my first Breitling was, "Oh yeah, don't change the date between 8 at night and 3 in the morning."

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SHARKMAN

Obviously, it wasn't Provident Jewelry but he has sent you quite some freebies anyhow.

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Could you expand on this please Sharkman ? How does the B01 caliber differ in this respect ? Once the changing date issue is learnt, its no biggy respecting the usual 8 - 3 rule with ALL auto watches, but if the B01 is different I'd love to know why.

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"Per Ardua Ad Lingi"

Actually what I heard from a local dealer is that if you were to manually change the date in the 'danger time' it will not damage the mechanism. All that happens is that the date would then change on subsequent days at odd times of the day, say at around 2pm rather than around midnight. Apparently this is 'sort of' kept secret in order to justify giving people a large repair bill; to get it working right again all they have to do is make a small adjustment.

Not tried it myself - and I'm not sure how true it is, but just passing this on!

I'm having a hard time believing that. Not that your dealer told you that but that there is some huge multinational conspiracy that spans across multiple corporations to charge extra to repair a problem that doesn't exist.

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"Leave the gun, take the cannoli."