Universal Geneve – Polerouter – Microtor Cal. 68

Jonatan and Patricia dropped off these two Universal Geneve watches a couple weeks ago. There’s this one, a Cal. 68 and the Cal. 215 .
I have always been a fan of Universal Geneve watches. I find the look of their watches as really clean and elegant. And, what is there not to like about a microrotor.
Let’s get started on this gem 🙂

Hello pretty 🙂

The rate is not bad at all, beat error needs a lot of work and the amplitude is pretty low, and that’s on a fully wound mainspring. Also, to note, I couldn’t find any mainsprings for this movement. And, I have some pretty good connections local and otherwise. Normally, for this particular movement, the mainspring was sold as a unit with the barrel, mainspring and arbor. So, I’ll have to make do with what is given to me.

A good ol’ Singer made dial out of 92.5 silver.

Here’s the dial side of the movement. Make note of that large diameter screw. I’ll make a few comments about it later on.

Again, such a pretty movement. Turns out, however, I have been misspelling Microrotor. It should have always been Microtor.

With the balance and pallets removed….

Just to give you and idea just how small that microtor is. And, there’s still 3 wheel in there, a click and click spring and more parts.

Here’s a closer view.

Compared to the link I shared above for the Cal. 215, everything is pretty much identical except this part of the watch. Which is, just the click and click spring for the rotor, or should I say Microtor 🙂

Next, I remove both the barrel and train wheel bridges.

Magic! No more wheels 🙂

Well ok, I lied, maybe 2 more 🙂

Phew, that mainspring is looking pretty good. Good thing though.

Here’s the opposite side of the barrel. It actually has pawl levers.

Here’s a quick peak into all the parts before they go into the basket and into the watch cleaning machine.

Although the movement is out of the watch cleaning machine, I still wipe down the mainspring further with some one-dip / new-dip for further cleaning.

And re-install it back into the barrel.

All together now 🙂

Time to start populating the mainplate.

Followed by adding piece by piece the gear train.

After installing the bridges to the gear train and barrel, I start assembling the microtor.

Getting there.

Next, the pallets and pallet cock.

I turn the movement over, and get started on the kelyess, which consists of the sliding pinion, winding pinion, setting lever and stem / crown.

Ok, I may have skipped a few steps, but, here’s a snap shot of the upper and lower cap jewels before I oil them with Moebius 9010 oil.

So, if you remember that image up above, if you look at the far right on the timegrapher. It showed the beat error was 1.7ms. Long story short, the beat error is the difference in milliseconds from one direction of the amplitude to the other. In this case, it was 1.7ms. In an ideal world, 0.0 would be perfect. However, on older watches that don’t have a regulator, this can be tricky. With a modern watch, you simply turn the regulator either direction until you hit the sweet spot which is 0.0. But, in older watches such as this fella, one must remove the balance from the balnce cock, and manually turn the collet in the right direction, re-install the balance and re-test until you get a better beat error.
Here’s a before and after.

Although I did not achieve 0.0, it is much better.

Again, I apologize for missing a few pictures of the process, I am now install the hands on the dial.

And re-case the movement.

A few more pictures 🙂

I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed working on this movement. I really hope my story-line and pictures depict it.
Cheers
Chris