The flyback

Gentlemen,

I’ve read a lot of comments, good and bad about the flyback function, I followed the discussions and it seems there is no satisfying answer about it. I had some spare time yesterday evening so I took my flyback and went to the Boutique here in Schaffhausen for a strap change. As usual, I used the possibility to chat with the watchmaker “on duty” who is old-school IWC and a great benefit not only to the Boutique but to customer relation in general. I told him the concerns and we played with my watch for quite a while to reproduce the problem…which isn’t one. It is amazing what you can do with these pushbuttons when you know what happens inside the movement, depending on various impacts.
We even managed a slow motion of the chrono second from 2 o’clock back to 11 o’clock and froze the movement. Now don’t try this at home
but it all depends on how hard you push the button.

I was fairly relaxed because I knew whatever he does will do no harm to the watch.

I am not a technician, engineer or whatever but I roughly know how a watch works. That said I cannot reproduce the technical explanations he gave me as I did not write down anything. Forces are involved, lots of...

The manual is not clear enough in my opinion. We found it also a good idea to make sure the sales staff knows about this issue so they can inform customers about details beforehand. To make a long story short, both pushers must be pressed hard and fastall the way and the flyback “problem” is not an issue any longer. If someone fears to damage his watch and just pushes a little or slow, it might behave strangely. Hope this is of help and no, I don’t want to start a discussion about the movement as such, it is as it is, I knew it before I bought my beauty and there is always the chance for improvement of course but I am satisfied with what I heard and saw.
And relaxed....

Thanks Tom!

Excellent post with great insider information, which should not be an insider information any longer, but spread out to the sales stuff and any IWC customer, as you mentioned!

It is quiet remarkable what your are telling us regarding how to push the buttons and what could happen, if you do it in a different way.

This "watchmaker on duty" in Schaffhausen is a great added value to all the IWC clients.

Thanks for sharing the knowledge and I will push the buttons - hard!

Cheers Chris

Thanks a lot Tom! I'll keep this in mind when I invest in an 8936X based reference. It will be good to know if this resolves the issues a few of the 89-series chrono users were facing.

Thanks Tom for this wonderful insight information. I've heard parts of it before but not that detailled.
I think it will lead to further criticism as well but I have too chronos with that base calibre:
- The Yacht Club with the 89360 and
- The Ingenieur Silberpfeil with the 89361
and I'm really happy with them. Though I think there's still space for improvement.
Looking forward to meet you soon. At the latest when Jarrod and Steff will be here. ;-)

thanks for finding out 'at the source'!

Appreciated,

B.

Hi Tom,

Thank you for your investigation!
I hope this wil helps the owners ho haven problems with the flyback function.
In my opinion this is stil a fantastic movement. It’s very accurate and in my case the chrono and flyback function works well.

Great information...thank you, Tom!

Confirming the truth, thank you a lot !

Yep, that was what i explained in my post on the other thread about this topic.

This might help with some models, but having owned 3 I can tell you there is a very inconsistent feel in the buttons between watches. My first Galapagos has really soft buttons that kept catching on something. I often reproduced the slow as you mentioned.

The second one had much firmer buttons, but in my case when it froze it was permanent. The service Centre had to open it to get it started.

You can't have a watch freeze because you haven't pressed a button hard enough. Not on a timepiece of this price.

Thanks for sharing.

In my experience with the Spitfire 3878, I needed to press the button with a little bit of force. Being gentle with it resulted with undesirable results twice. Once was the slow motion and the other was the watch froze (which was unfrozen when I pressed the reset button again).

I have been pressing the button with force since. It never gave me any problems.