A New Year’s resolution that’s sure to fail is “don’t buy more broken watches on eBay until you fix the ones you have,” but I’m making a good effort and working through my stash.

Some time back, I bought a lot of grubby Russian watches from a eastern European seller on eBay. (What’s the worst that could happen, right?) Here’s one of them: an ultra-1970s Poljot wristwatch with a thrashed crystal and a “Hulk green” dial. The crystal is so rough you can barely make out the dial.

Inside is the Poljot 2609H movement, a newer generation movement with an improved balance assembly. The movement was not working, and the balance wheel appeared to be stuck.

Here’s the balance assembly. This is an essentially modern balance. It has incablock shock jewel settings, a three-arm alloy balance wheel, a white alloy hairspring, and a moveable stud carrier to make it easy to set the watch in beat.

The crystal was a wreck. This watch has seen a lot.

Badly cracked crystals lead to damaged dials, and we have a dirty dial under there. It is a 1970s style in the popular “Hulk green” color. Based on the English dial text, this watch was one of Poljot’s export models.

Here’s another look. Some of the printing is missing, and it looks like someone tried to clean the dial. It won’t photograph, but there are two flatter, matte spots on the glossy dial where the writing is. I think someone tried to clean up this dial and did what usually happens—it gets a blotchy, uneven appearance.

This case is super 70s. Like most Russian watches from the period, it is chrome-plated base metal.

It’s pretty clean and has only the usual nicks and scuffs. The plating looks shiny and bright. The case should clean up nicely.

Time to take this thing apart and see why it won’t run. One guess is a fine layer of oily grease on everything. This movement is a glob of grease and hair. Gross.

Repairing & Adjusting the Movement

After a thorough cleaning, it was easy to spot the problem with this watch: the hairspring was distorted. I think someone tried to regulate the time by pushing the hairspring stud carrier. It’s a common mistake because the stud carrier is much bigger than the regulator pins. The regulator pins were too close and looked slightly mashed. As a result, moving the stud carrier caused the spring to get kinked and bend near the stud. You can see the uneven spring below.

Hairsprings are my arch-enemy, but I can get this spring closer to its original shape. With a pair of fine-tipped tweezers, a mug of hot tea, and a few choice swear words, I was able to make the spring look much better. It isn’t perfect, but the watch ticked to life with clean traces and great amplitude. (Note that this movement has a lift angle of 51 degrees, if you’re working on one.)

The beat error is atrocious, which fits my theory that someone moved the stud carrier hoping to slow the watch down. With some patient nudging, it’s easy to reduce the beat error and correct the rate. Here’s what we have dial up (DU).

Much better!

After demagnetizing the watch and letting it run for a day or so, I measured the rates at full wind. For a modern alloy wheel, you would expect good poise, which was the case here.

But for this watch, we had a hanging/lying deviation. The two lying (horizontal) rates were very close, around +10 dial-up and dial-down. And the four vertical rates were close to each other (around +32 in all 4 hanging positions). You can see, however, that the horizontal rates are much slower than the vertical ones by around 22 seconds.

In this situation, you could slightly open the regulator pins. This would slow down the watch overall, but it would have a larger slowing effect on the vertical rates than the horizontal ones, thus causing them to converge. For this watch, though, we won’t be able to get the rates very close. The hairspring isn’t in factory-spec shape, and the regulator pins have been mashed a bit, so precisely manipulating the spring’s position at rest within the pins is outside of what can be realistically done with this particular watch. (As an aside, this is a virtue of the superior ETA etachron system for fine manipulation of the hairspring stud and regulator pins).

But we can at least make the rates a bit better. With some delicate opening of the pins, we ended up with a closer but imperfect result: around +3 horizontal and +16 vertical. For this watch’s condition, I’ll take it as a win.

Casing and Cleaning

The case got a light cleaning and a new crystal and crown. I lightly cleaned the hands instead of replacing them. You can buy new hands that resemble these, but the dial and hands of a vintage watch should match. An aged dial with bright, new hands looks weird.

Finally, I lightly cleaned the dial using a Q-tip, cold water, and dish soap. The aim was to clean the dial markers and remove the oily layer. I wouldn’t normally touch the dial, but there was little to lose because of its condition. It did brighten up a bit, and the shinier dial markers are a big improvement.

Wrapping up

I think this old Poljot is weird and cool, but it isn’t for everyone. I showed this watch to my wife and she gave a startled yelp. Clearly, she doesn’t appreciate the finer things, like 1970’s Russian design.

If there was a disco period in the communist-era Soviet Union, this would be its official watch.