Timex has had a reputation online for being the cheaply made throwaway timepieces. I wanted to see for myself when some cheap Timex electric watches emerged on Yahoo auction JP.

That was the beginning of a traumatic experience.

The Timex arrived not running with a fresh battery. A closer inspection revealed an overbanked balance wheel, where the impulse pin went over the wrong side of the pallet fork causing the balance to be stuck.

What I could have done on a normal movement was simply reseat the balance but Timex is it's own breed. The shunt bridge was forbidding my removal of the balance, and with the movement sitting in the case, it is difficult (but not impossible as I later found out).

In hindsight, all I had to do was to jam an oiler from the side to push the pallet fork over to the correction position.

I got myself a practice movement, which was running but minute hand didn't move.

The acrylic crystal must be removed first to allow removal of the movement from the case. My Chinese crystal lift was working, with a bit of extra tools.

I disassembled the movement according to the service manual for cleaning and lubrication. When removing the balance bridge I saw a strange sight. This spring, which hooks onto the third wheel to provide friction to the pinion that drives the minute wheel, is stuck on the permanent magnet of of the front plate.

This means when the third wheel turns, it's movement isn't translate to the front side where the minute wheel and hour wheel are. No wonder why the second hand ticks but others don't.

Note that the spring itself is asymmetric - one straight end and the other end has a hook. The service manual sort of assumed everyone know which ends go where and decided not to provide another view that's more helpful in indicating the spring's orientation when inserted back onto the third wheel.

If someone did it the wrong way, the spring will slip out by the force of time setting and eventually either block the train of wheel or fly out entirely, to become stuck onto the permanent magnet.

I did it the wrong way.

The watch runs at first and after some time, become stuck.

It took me two complete strip-down/reassembly, and I even used some light glue to stick the spring on, unfortunately the orientation was wrong still. Before I could figure it out, my violent removal of crystal has scratched the dial and bent the sweep second wheel pinion.

I thought I might get lucky, so I moved on to the original Timex electric that had started this ordeal. That was the forth time I was reassembling one and still I got the third wheel friction spring in the wrong direction.

If only they drew the correction orientation, or even mentioning it, on the service manual.

The movement inevitably stop. It stopped in a weird way where the balance was swinging normally, hitting the pin pallet fork and yet the escape wheel just wasn't turning.

After a lot of online researching and a bit of soul searching, I figured out that when the spring partially slides out, it's end is pressing against the wall of the main plate and since the third wheel isn't turning every other wheels connected to it wouldn't turn either.

And guess what, putting the spring in opposite orientation had fixed the issue. I lubricated the tip of the pinion to be extra sure. In both examples of the watch the springs were already dislodged when I get to the third wheel. How would I have known? Especially when the service manual didn't specify.

Well had I used a stronger glue, the spring would have stayed in, until a few years down the line they deteriorate and begin sticking to some other things or chip off and block the movement again.

With others having detailedly documented their experience with this movement, all I wanted to say with this post is: put the spring in the right way.

Update (2025-06-01): I found this functional third wheel with friction spring at the "wrong" position but it works.

I guess it's lubrication on the friction pinion then.

Since whatever I have written above is now inconclusive, I thought I should put out a bonus tips.

If you flick the date wheel along its rotation direction from behind the battery, you can quick set the date of these watches which otherwise requires actually advancing the time to the desired date.