walkthrough Full service report of a stunning tropical Dugena 986 with a ETA 2408! Video and Pictures inside.

[berlintime]

Hello again watchbangers!

Here I am again with my newest project I had on my table with the appropriate walkthrough for anyone in the future! If you do not want to read everything, here is a link to the full Youtube Video:

https://youtu.be/Fw2DmVTBdxQ

Now it was only a matter of time until something really patina-ed would find itself to me and this was it! My very first pretty nicely patina-ed dial! I have had plenty of patina-ed watches before, with all kinds of horrible patina ( or damage), so I really grew fond of this “nice „ one while working it it! Ironically its a Dugena Tropica ( hehe) which is in rather good condition!


From the outside the large issues were the extremely gunked up areas around the crystal as well as the battle scarred crown which would need a replacement! And the watch was ticking!

Funnily enough, the case back revealed the habit of a previous owner wearing this watch on a nato strap for quite a while I think ( With the marbled pattern on the metal) !

Now opening the watch revealed many previous marking on the inside meaning that this watch was probably cared for well and a very pretty perlage finish !

The inside revealed a fairly simple movement with a pretty blued balance spring and nicely polished screw for the ratchet wheels ( even if they don’t look like that on the picture). There was a fair amount of dirt stuck to the case holder ring and in the thread of the case back, so I will clean that out with an ultrasonic before putting the serviced movement back into it!

I released the movement from the case by unscrewing and taking out the movement clamps ( they where a real pain to work with) and plopped it out onto a cushion to take a look at the state of the dial. The dial had a nice hue to it with a few blobs of deeper colours scattered around the center. For some reason, there was a higher scale of “degradation” on the right side. Maybe there was more moisture there? Or more sunlight? If anyone maybe has a clue why this happened please comment! Otherwise its cool to realize that the hands used to be a bit too low on the dial as you can see the circular scrape marks of the hour hand which probably took away some of the patina! When I checked the hand height however, it seemed like someone fixed that issue already in the past! The indices as well as the hands looked sharp and I might just polish some grime of them with some pith wood later.

Taking of the dial and the hands reveals a petty complicated dial side at first but after a closer look is basically an older version of the typical eta calendar system nowadays.

So I start by taking of the hour wheel with the friction spring, the cover plate for the setting wheel and the wheel itself.

As the cover plate was also keeping the date ring in place, I can now remove that aswell while also not forgetting the date lever and its spring.

Thirdy I took off the date wheel which pushes the date ring one day further. Now I know that it works on a similar “spring” concept as I also removed a spring lodged underneath it but I somehow cant wrap my mind around the exact method yet.

Then I removed the newly revealed cap jewel ( love those) for the escapement wheel.

Then I took out the setting cover plate and then yoke, the clutches and the yoke spring. The setting lever was screwed in from the back side so I will just unscrew that later. Don’t forget that!

With that done, we can switch to the back side of the movement and take off the balance wheel first to make sure that we don’t accidentally damage it when further working on the watch. That also revealed the caliber number which turned out to be the ETA 2408 movement.

Then we take of the ratchet and winding wheel with the click and the click spring , which where lying in the milled groove beneath, which I found pretty neat, the click also had a cool curved shape which I like, you can see that in the video.

Off goes the train wheel bridge revealing the simple gear train.

Then I took out the gear train as far as I could, so the seconds-hand wheel, the third wheel and the escapement wheel. I took of the pallet fork and its bridge in the same step..

Then I turned my attention to the last two “wheels” and revealed them by taking of the barrel bridge.

I removed the barrel and the minute driving wheel ( which basically hooks through the entire plate to the front side and drives the minute wheel.)

With that the movement was basically disassembled and I had a quick peek at the shock systems. This watch interestingly had a screwed down Inca-Bloc on the main plate side, I wonder how that would work when adjusting end shakes? I took both jewel packages out for the cleaning

Now after cleaning all the movement components in a 1:2 ( Cleaning / Rinse) cycle with Elma WF Pro and Elma Suprol in my trusty Glashütte cleaning machine I reassembled the watch by following the steps backwards and lubricating on the way!

Here is list of which lubritation I used where:

Moebius 9010: Escapement wheel, seconds hand wheel, jewel caps.
Moebius HP 1300: Mainspring Arbor, Barrel pivots, minute wheel (both), minute driving wheel, Pivots for transmission and setting wheel and contact surface of the date lever.
Moebius 9415: Pallet fork jewels
Molykote DX: All strong friction points in the gear less works and on surfaces which showed high stages of wear.

After the reassembling the watch and lubricating everything I slapped it onto the timegrapher. Of course I demagnetized it before. The dial up side had an alright rate and beat error however I am unhappy with the amplitude. As I didn’t have a spare mainspring, a new balance spring or the ability to manipulate the palettes, I just hoped that the amplitude would rise a bit after the watch had run in a bit and would maybe even gain a bit more through the tension of the case clamps.


I also replaced the crystal with a one and cleaned up the grimed up case with some physical force and an ultra sonic bath.


The final product was this beauty:

This project was a fairly simple one! However pressing in a tension ring crystal was a first! It defintly felt weird pressing down on an acrylic crystal haha. Otherwise it is a bit frustrated not being able to physically influence the ampltiude other than by replacing parts. I will definetly be looking into getting a heating plate and some tools soon so that I man manipulate the escapement! Gotta get those degrees up! What I also found really cool is that I could see a previous version of the modern Eta date wheel! It was like a little time machine going back 40 years! Anyways.. I am rambeling on now so I will cut it short! I hope that this post helps anyone in the future and I am sorry for any misinformation! I am not a professional of any sorts and am just doing my best! If you guys have any thoughts, comments and complaints, please comment!

Edited February 15 by berlintime
Inserted Link

[Knebo]

On 2/15/2025 at 5:57 PM, berlintime said:

link to the full Youtube Video:

https://youtu.be/Fw2DmVTBdxQ

I like the disclaimer at the beginning 

[berlintime]

On 2/17/2025 at 9:27 AM, Knebo said:

I like the disclaimer at the beginning 

Hehe thanks! I found it to pretty important to say!