zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

Having worked in both tool and die manufacturing, and heavy equipment building, I generally like your thinking about lubrication and machine longevity. I religiously changed the oil every 3,000 miles in my 1987 Oldsmobile Ciera and never heard a squeek from her before 178,000 miles.

That said, there's also a saying in engineering along the lines of "be careful about scale." If small and large scales were obviously interchanged, passenger aircraft would look like paper airplanes.

So, again, while I like the idea of keeping my watches lubricated, there is an offset due to their scale that does not exist w/ your car and mine. You must "violate" the integrity of the watch to lubricate it. Open the case. Scale viscosity issues mean disassembly to remove older lubes and then thoroughly reintroduce new. This is not the case w/ your much larger, higher volume car engine.

Instead of thinking engine oil, you might think automatic transmission fluid (read, "lubricant," in addition to power transfer). You can't easily change that fluid, because of the nature of holding in the torque converter (monitor volume out versus known capacity and this becomes obvious).

Otherwise, if I may weigh in more generally on this thread - it seems to me that anyone can rant in w/ a post that says, "who cares?" or, "why don't you just wait and see?" Those require no thinking, no research, no analysis. They are "spoiler" comments I typically hear in my line of work (as a divorce mediator) among folks who have no ideas of their own, and thus resent conversations they cannot contribute to. So they want to invalidate the topic itself.

I admire Georges greatly, both for his technical knowledge and his passion in putting it forth.

And, mjb, you make some excellent points w/ regard to "in house" versus not "in house" movements. Believe me, I was in marketing for one company that tried to leverage it's "in house" tooling production ten ways to Tuesday. Based on what you've written, I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to learn that the in-house guys sub-contracted stuff on occasion, when demand exceeded their ability to deliver. Further, our competition would rightly argue that outsourced suppliers face competition, so they have to constantly meet and exceed past performance measures, whereas in-house guys have a guaranteed, closed market.

They'd point to (again, back to your comparison) the automotive industry of the 1970s. Captive, in-house (read, "in-country") meant "don't have to try."

As a proud Rolex and Omega owner, I am not suggesting either is "the" argument. But what I am saying is that both arguments are valid. More importantly, should be respected, even when debated.

I think that you may be hurting some of the very strong points you make here when you say, "a watch is just a watch." If that's your point, those six words say it. If it is not really your point, any (possibly great) argument you may subsequently make is likely to be undermined by those six words.