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I wanted to present my experience and information supplied to me by Breitling in Wilton, Connecticut. I own a Navitimer 01, rose gold. When I bought the first model back in 2015, the date wheel slipped past the new date at midnight and got stuck between two dates. While I was able to pull the crown out and spin it forward until the correct date slipped into place, this happened repeatedly and ultimately, the watch ground to a halt. The Breiling repair center found the geartrain to have been damaged and a technician repaired it. This happened again and again I sent it back. The Breitling center sent it to Switzerland for inspection. When the same thing happened a third time, Breitling replaced the entire movement. It happened again! I demanded a brand new watch and Breitling agreed, accepting the damaged watch in trade in. The new watch suffered exactly the same problem. The technicians in Wilton CT repaired it, and again the date wheel slipped and stuck between two dates - this happened twice in a week. I decided to request a personal call from a technician. Breitling agreed, and a technical coordinator, Andrew Koch, called me. When I described what happened, he asked me to identify the font of the date. I did that, and sent him photos of the watch. He diagnosed the problem. He gave me two pieces of crucial information that I did not know:
1. The problem was NOT caused by my adjusting date and time between 9 pm and 3 am. That is a prohibited maneuver for the 1130 movement, which Koch explained has not been installed in Breitling watches since 2006. Instead of directly mounted on fixed posts, watches now have spring loaded gears which make it safe for us to move the date and minute hand at any time without breaking anything. Some Breitling sales reps in Connecticut still refer to that prohibition but fail to consider the generation of watch - when it was assembled.
2. All three movements - my first watch, the replacement movement, and the new watch I was shipped - had a "version 1" of a calendar disk - which is NOT COMPATIBLE with the rest of the geartrain. So essentially, I have had a series of Navitimer 2.0s (or whatever) while my date disk is a 1.0. This inevitably damaged the gears connecting to the date disk. So I just shipped my watch back to Breitling on UPS (for the 7th time??) and this time, Andrew Koch will brief the technician. An updated date disk, different model, different font, will be installed, and I will have no more trouble. I hope. He said the "1.0" (my term) calendar disk has been troublesome in the past. I will also have them adjust the regulator.
I find it strange that through all the repairs, replacements, returns, inspections in Connecticut, repair done in Switzerland - nobody thought of this? I described the problem in detail on the repair form. Yet the techs fixed the watch and sent it back to me with the same part specs.
I suspect there may be hundreds of these watches out there having this problem. I bought my first one off the shelf at Feldmar Watch Company in Los Angeles (not their fault, obviously). Since three movements had this problem, how many other owners have it? Should Breitling issue a bulletin and offer to recall the watches to replace the calendar disks?
The Breitling staff has been very courteous to me but this is the first time I got a technically proficient employee to talk to me and actually figure it out. I hope this ends the problem. My Navitimer - when it is working - keeps outstanding time (I adjust it once every three months), has a cool chronograph complication, and looks great. I don't want a different model. I want this one to work so I can enjoy it for decades to come.
I hope this is helpful to others on this site. I wanted to show a photo of the watch, but the file is too big to upload.
I welcome your comments.
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