The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Modern synthetic lubricants will allow a watch to continue to work once it should be serviced (less accurately mind you) until the watch itself breaks requiring both repair and service.

Not at all.

Modern synthetic lubricants are wonderful, but they can't defeat the laws of chemistry. Beyond about 7 years those oils will have broken down and you will be running a watch with no lubricant at all. Sure the watch will run, but the friction on arbors, pivots, wheels, etc will be significantly increased causing a lot of additional servicing costs. Evidence here - http://home.watchprosite.com/show-nblog.post/ti-432276/

Synthetic watch oils do retain their properties longer and watch movements run longer without wear than did movements oiled with animal oils. But synthetic watch oils have their serious downside as well. There is not the thickening and caking of the oil to stop the movement and force the owner to have his watch serviced before wear can take place. Synthetic watch oils, too, deteriorate but instead of thickening they tend to become more liquid, spread and evaporate over time, especially the synthetics of the recent past. The significant of this type of deterioration is that the movement will continue to run even as the synthetic oil deteriorates and evaporates (albeit less efficiently). This will continue until pivots score, often to the point of breaking and brass bearing holes wear ovoid, aggravated by dust, dirt and rust particles from leaking case gaskets and more significantly, leaking crown gaskets. Unless the owner is disciplined with a regular and frequent service schedule (and most of us aren’t), it is the worn out movement that forces the owner to seek the servicing of the watch with a resultant extensive and expensive repair bill. The jewelled bearings and highly polished pivots and other bearing surfaces will allow the watch to run without oil but with resultant wear.

So Mark Heist agrees with me then - highlights added by me.

Dude, I said the exact same thing originally.

Perhaps not to the level of detail that you or Mark Heist have, but the same concept.

[Modern synthetic lubricants will allow a watch to continue to work once it should be serviced (less accurately mind you) until the watch itself breaks requiring both repair and service. There are usually signs that the watch needs service, such as it becoming less accurate or not running for as long as it should (42ish hours).

Modern synthetic lubricants are wonderful, but they can't defeat the laws of chemistry. Beyond about 7 years those oils will have broken down and you will be running a watch with no lubricant at all. Sure the watch will run, but the friction on arbors, pivots, wheels, etc will be significantly increased causing a lot of additional servicing costs. Evidence here - http://home.watchprosite.com/show-nblog.post/ti-432276/

'Dude' you said (as I quoted) "Modern synthetic lubricants will allow a watch to continue to work once it should be serviced". That's simply not true. The absence of old oils that effectively became shellac once they aged allows a watch to run, it has nothing to do with the presence of synthetic lubricants - the exact same outcome would occur if there were no lubrication presence (which is effectively what occurs after the synt-a-lube has broken down).

Nickzac - Your previous post was without a doubt the most insightful and directly useful for my search. I think the details about the need or lack of oil post 7ish years is good to know but in the grand scheme of my purposes a relatively mute point. Accounting for all the factors you mentioned, I think you are spot on, buying a 2005 has a lot of underlying costs associated with it and I actually located a new 2011 from an AD. Now after realizing that the SO is actually 17mm thick and the Colt is 14mm, it's just going to come down to one last time trying them on and seeing if the 17mm is just too over the top and overkill for my liking. Thanks again to everyone for the help.