Erwin Watch It: Buler LED watch by Bertone - Lancia Stratos

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