Momo Design Essenziale

When flicking through a book called "Ferrarissima" I noticed these cool adverts in it. One of them was by Momo. And I instantly liked it and looked it up and found one for sale on Ebay in Spain. As the price was right I bought it as well. 

For those not familiar with Momo, hereby the wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(company)

I do happen to have Ferrari 400 with a Momo steering wheel, so this would be a nice match. So this was another reason why I bought it. 

I could not find out exactly when this watch was designed/produced, but since the book is from 1985 I think it's from that year. Another good reason to buy it as I like the seventies and eighties stuff.

As you can see on the photo it's a very minimalistic style watch and has a modest diameter of 32 mm

I also placed the watch on the actual advert in the book

As it was not running I had to open it up and hoping it was having a dead battery. I actually did not check the battery and simply ordered a new one (Varta V364). 

When opening it up I unfortunately made a scratch on the black coated cap, sigh!  Yes, just like the LED watch this one does not a small hole for a knife to open it. On the back the following is stamped: water resistant - ETA swiss quartz - all stainless steel. And also the following is engraved: "laiag"  I am sure what that means but was unable to find anything about it. The serial or reference is M0917A. 

With the cap off I could now see the movement which is having a nice blue circuitboard. It is actually a semi mechanical watch and having 7 jewels.

The movement is provided by ETA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_SA

And having nr 956.032  Clearly I am a novice at this but it was very easy to look up information about this movement. If it was broken somehow you easily can purchase parts or a complete unit, ie:

https://www.esslinger.com/eta-2-hand-quartz-watch-movement-956-032-overall-height-3-6mm/

Since I was working on the other LED watch I figured it might have a poor battery, despite they were both new ordered. So when measuring they both provided 1.5V after all. Out of curiosity I also measured the battery for this Momo watch. To my surprise it also provided 1.5V. So when I put it back in and left it for a few minutes (it has no second hand/marker) it appeared to be working. How's that? I now have a brand new spare battery as it's still running nice and keeping accurate time.

I need to give the leather strap a bit of treatment but other than that it's a nice addition. To bad it's a little small. And I'm also slightly annoyed by the fact not much more info about this model is available on the internet. I sense it's quite a fairly unique watch in the sense of first Momo watches created. I also like the style of the "newer" Essenziale model watches.

Oh, in the advert it did mention it was available in black (men) and in gold. When checking again on Ebay I now found this 18k watch. Adding the photo's here for reference. Its listed for 495 GBP

Buler LED watch by Bertone - Lancia Stratos - model 1009-22952

This one is my latest purchase. I bought it at a Italian market website somewhere in February. And I only received it last week. I will spare you the details on what happened but it was a small miracle I got it in the end. 

As you might know or not I'm a classic Italian car enthusiast. As such I bumped into an article about this watch. Clearly these are not mass produced and as such hard to find. In any case I was intrigued by it due to the car related history, the brand and the LED technique used. So I wanted to have one. 

Unfortunately I did not make screenshots of the original advert but the provided photos were not exactly good (understatement). I could not have seen that one of the buttons was missing. If I only had known that beforehand. When questioning this afterwards I was informed by her that she thought it was suppose to be like that). I was also informed the bracelet was original (which I seriously doubted) and the watch was functional. But since greed was on my side I bought it nevertheless and ignored all the red flags.

On arrival the first thing I did was the removal of the bracelet. I had already purchased a very cheap watch toolkit when working on my Seiko, so removing it was a easy task. The bracelet was clearly an aftermarket and very small too as it did not fit my wrist. 

As I had already done some research regarding these watches I knew there were a few variants available. And originally this watch was luckily supplied with a black leather strap. So I can easily put something similar on.

Removing the battery cover was a completely different game. As there is no small hole to put your knife under it made it very difficult. I was also unsure if it was maybe having a thread screw cap. Certainly there were no indicators for that either. So I figured it had to be pressed. Note there is a print on the cap with an arrow mentioning "bezel" So it had to put back in that direction. I'm unsure what the nr 1009-22952 represents. So when searching for it I hit an expired Catawiki auction with the same model. So I guess it must the model reference nr. Furthermore this auction had provided a very good section of photo's which always good for comparing and checking.

After many fiddling and hurting my fingers I managed to get the cap off. On the inside of the cap you can read the mark "swiss case"

The batteries were seriously oxidated and leaving a black and green marking on the contacts.
I believe on the picture below I had already removed a bit. Luckily the batteries have not been leaking or such.

The battery that came out was the following:

At this stage I could not do much more. So I ordered 2 new batteries Varta V392 and a leather strap.
The batteries have arrived by now and replaced. Unfortunately nothing happened. Sigh. So I did further cleaning of the battery contacts.

And when putting the batteries in again one LED was presenting a 0. But that was about it. Bummer!
Again slightly dissapointed by this:

Then I realized I maybe should try to play around with the push buttons, perhaps I had to toggle with it in order to set the timing. Maybe it did require a combination of pushes or such. Also the push contacts were heavily contaminated. So I had that cleaned as well and tried it. But this had no influence or whatsoever. I was stuck again.

When fiddling around with the batteries again I now ended up with a "1" on the second LED. I know this as I had the unit taken out to inspect the LED screen. You can see clearly it's the 2nd LED. So by now I had at least 2 LEDs intermittently working. This was somewhat encouraging.

Here you can see the unit itself with a supporting sticker mentioning the components are made in the USA and assembled in HongKong

For now I'm still unsure if there is a component defect or a printed circuit damaged. Maybe a capacitor or the crystal quartz/oscillator is defect. I tried to further open it up but didn't want to damage it so I left it. There is one screw but I'm unsure what's the purpose of it. I suspect the NDK63F is the crystal quartz, there is another small component sitting next to it. 

When enlarging the photo on the computer, you can visibly read stamped on the unit; unadjusted, hong kong, for collins, no jewel. I need to dig a little more around but don't think I will find much more. 

When doing a few more testings (fiddling) I somehow got the single dot LED present, so that's working as well:

Still a shame this push button is missing as I sense this watch can be fixed somehow. On the Catawiki auction you can see how it should be looking like. It looks similar as the other two on the other side, except it does has a hole in it to press the button with a pen or such . The more triangle button is true push button that slides in to push the pin.

Something I realize today is that I'm unsure if the LEDs are suppose to light when simply adding the batteries? I thought this was suppose to happen when using the push button?

So today I subscriped to a FB group specialized in vintage watches, hopefully the can help out.

Yes, today finally the new straps arrived. Finally a easy and very rewarding job to put on. Looks very good in my opinion:

When doing further fiddling with the module I now have a new situation with the LEDs. Previously I almost ended up with a 1 on the 2nd LED (most often) or a 0 or the 4th LED. And very occassionly a dot, as per examples above. And in all those occassions they remained solid on, untill I broke the battery connection. This is odd as I believe the LEDs should be turned on when pressing the button. 

Now I have the 4th LED on with 3 characters only and it lasts only a few seconds. I managed to make this unclear photo

This would make more sense to me when replacing batteries and showing some kind of functionality and then go off again. 

Links: 

https://drivr.be/2020/03/27/collectors-item-bertone-stratos-led-watch/

https://www.watches.com/blogs/news/rare-vintage-collabs-1970s-nepro-jaguar-xjs-bertone-lancia-stratos-led-watches

https://www.catawiki.com/nl/l/48648737-buler-swiss-stratos-bertone-n-o-s-1009-22952-unisex-1970-1979

https://www.catawiki.com/en/l/48889859-buler-swiss-stratos-bertone-n-o-s-1018-23013-unisex-1970-1979

https://www.horlogeforum.nl/t/bertone-stratos-buler-hughes-aircraft-led-horloge/364825/3

https://watchcharts.com/listing/2772200/vintage-red-led-watch-buler-bertone-stratos-box

https://collectorstudio.com/product/1975-lancia-stratos-watch/

https://www.digitalwatches.de/ENGLISH_INDEX.HTM

https://solution.murata.com/en-global/products/microbatteries_watch/asset/home/files/CrossReference_en.pdf

https://hackaday.com/2018/11/28/collecting-repairing-and-wearing-vintage-digital-watches/

https://www.10ora10.hu/en/bertone-zun-2010029.html

https://www.theledwatch.com/node/202

Introduction

Yes, another blog! This one is not car related and as the title suggest, it's about watches. It's becoming maybe a new hobby. So I figured to do a little more tracking about them. Last year or so a Seiko watch did trigger my interest. It was one used by James Bond in one of the movies. Prior to that I never had a strong interest in watches. I once bought a expensive one and to my surprise I rarely worn it. My other daily watch I have already for ages, at least more than 20 years or so. 
Due to the Seiko quartz watch I had to do a little repair and noticed these overhaul video's on Youtube which I find very interesting and relaxing to watch. By now I have purchased a few and I will create a blog about each of them.