The Breitling Watch Source Forums

hi everyone,
great forum, really useful.

I have a mint condition SuperOcean steelfish for sale locally. I have arranged a meet with a buyer. He just wants to make sure the watch is in correct working order. His local Breitling dealer said that the date movement should happen quickly at midnight, and that is a good way to check if the Breitling is working properly.

Obviously we are not going to meet at midnight, so I proposed that when we do meet (sometime 7AM-noon) we could just change the time to 11:59PM and watch the date change together.

I then remembered the instruction manual saying to not change the date during 8PM - 3AM. Here on the forums people mentioned this may be due to the internal workings of the watch working to change the date during that time.

So would my idea not work then? If the watch is already preparing to change the date by 8PM, wouldnt skipping ahead so many hours straight to 11:59PM cause some problems?

Thanks

Well the premise of a quick date change being an indication that the watch is fine is flawed anyway - yet more misinformation from your friendly Breitling retailer.

The issue is with the quickset date, you can wind the hands forward to just before midnight (or through midnight for that matter) with no issues, just don't wind time backwards or use the quick set date between an indicated time of 8pm and 3am.

thank you for your response.
When the watch strikes midnight, should the date change quickly, or is it more of a gradual thing (like the minute hand?)

It varies from watch to watch because it's based on the torque in the system and that varies depending on age, power reserve, etc. This calibre isn't the slowest changer (the 7750 based Breitling 13 can take up to 45 minutes to visually make the change). You can see how long it takes by just winding the hands through midnight - obviously it's faster when you move the hands but you can see what time it visually starts moving and when it finishes. Also don't be surprised if it starts (or finishes) a few minutes before midnight - that's not a symptom of a problem.

thank you very much