Various Questions about ETA Quartz repair.

Hi everyone! Super excited to be joining this hobby. It began about three months ago when I was grandfathered my first luxury watch that he bought for my 18th birthday, a Shinola Brakeman 42mm chronograph (I know it’s not a tag but it got me into quartz!). I discovered and fell in love with Tag Heuer shortly after, actually it was from a video game I love playing, Gran Tourismo. Naturally I was into classic Tags and Heuers, I am after all a huge classic car guy.

I bought my first Tag about a few months after. It was a Tag 2000 973.006 it had occasional hiccups so I took it to a jeweler to have it checked and they suggested a several 100 dollar tab. I told them “heck no” and that night I started learning about how to fix them, I learned that most tags use ETA movements and can basically be swapped out with limited tools.

Time for some practice, I started with a broken watch my dad had bought when he was young, a Swiss Army. I sourced the movement and went to replace it. I learned lots about hand alignment and placing the hands without breaking them (which I did) and overall found it wasn’t as easy as I thought. But I kept practicing on that watch and eventually got it fixed, I even customized it with a unique second hand and the product was beautiful. Now I was ready to move on to some tags, the 80’s F1 seemed like a good place to start not super expensive and the movements were cheap.

My first F1 I repaired was a 382.513, I took extra attention to make sure each part was original and in good condition I ended up selling to a friend. I then found a cute 360.308 and restored this one, at this point I was working out the kinks and was having good success, things are working well and buyers were happy so I bought two more prestigious projects, a Tag 2000, and my favorite to date, a 1000 980.113.

My current project I ran into something a bit interesting. The watch came without a movement at all, it is a 980.025 beautiful PVD heuer salesman. I’ve read up and identified the movement to be 965.112/3 but finding a part on eBay has yielded no results. Where should I go about buying parts for my projects? Specifically for this movement and in general. I’ve also had terrible experience with buying movements on eBay, about 50% of them have been defective on arrival.

I also have been selling projects to family friends and on eBay, is there a better place to sell them? I’ve been frustrated with the fees on eBay.

I’ve been loving this hobby and am so excited to join the Tag Heuer community, I’ve attached pictures of my projects for you guys. Thanks for reading and have a great one! (Got any suggestions for a future projects or tips? I’m all ears.)

Amazing work and refreshing to hear from someone else who loves quartz watches! 👍 welcome to this great community

Very nice! If you are trying to turn this into a business then you may want to look at the watch modding community. Working movements will only come up so often, but mod parts are always available. The top models to be modded are the Seiko SKX (and related divers) as well as the Invicta 8926. Both are automatic watches (not quartz) and quite cheap ($150-200 for the Seiko, $80-$100 for the Invicta). The movements and other parts are extremely common and durable, and by swapping out hands, faces, bezels and crystals, you can get some striking looks -- either copying something classic (like the Submariner, Fifty Fathoms or Doxa) or something completely new (search for Planet Monster, which combines a Seiko Monster face, an Omega Planet Ocean style bezel, and a particular set of hands to create a striking combination). People who are good at modding (meaning they don't screw it up and leave dust on the backside of the crystal, or an eyelash on the dial or something like that) can make decent earnings for their time.

If I’m not mistaken the ESA 965.112/3 can be replaced directly with the ETA 803.114.

There’s a circuit board on eBay for the 965.112.

Whilst it’s geberally easier to swap over movements, normally it will be just the circuit board that’s the issue. If you can learn to service the actual movement, then you’d be able to salvage the movements overall and at that point they may work again, or need the electronic part replacing.

Okay, that’s interesting, that would probably involve soldering which i have done for other projects. I’ll look into that. Thank you!

Also what does “directly replaced mean?” I could buy that and fit original hands and dial feet will fit well? I did find a website that has the original which is probably better when it comes to holding full value right?

Thanks for the advice! As an amateur I appreciate.,

In most cases direct replacement means everything will fit without modification.

It’s definately better to have the original movement fitted in a watch.

I have no clue about the work involved in swapping circuit boards over, but as far as I can tell it’s just a screw in screw out job, and no soldering.