Encouraged by the Casio G shock results I thought I'd have a go at hydro-modding myself.

In the sonorous words of farming savant and motoring philosopher Mr J Clarkson, how hard could it be?

There's no inline posting of YouTube videos in this forum (I don't know why...) but here's one I found with the title "Oil Filling a Watch:How to tutorial. SO EASY!!!!".

I felt emboldened.

Remember this?



It's my Luminox. Which fell into traffic and needed some help.

Since fixing it, I've been using it a lot. But given it has many wounds, I thought it would be an ideal candidate...

Patient in place:



I am using silicon oil, which is not supposed to attack gaskets. Plus, the Japanese brand translates to "Ace", which must help.

Remove the battery, stem and movement. Then submerge the case...



Add the battery to the movement, return it to the case. Flood it with silicon oil and poke the crown back in...



Then swish the oil around and gently agitate the bowl to help bubbles escape. Once no more bubbles, add the caseback with a fresh gasket, and tighten both it and the crown.

And there you go!



Actually, that's the watch an hour later

After I'd reversed the entire procedure. It was a failure.

The patient died on the operating table. With the oil in, the seconds hand would just faintly judder, but not make progress. I tried removing the oil from the case, but the same issue persisted. I tried replacing the battery. No change.

Maybe the oil was the wrong viscosity? Or perhaps the Ronda 715Li just doesn't care for oil baths.

Whatever the cause, I had to drain the whole movement and carefully clean all the parts. And silicon oil is not a joy to remove.

Once I did this, and it was oil-free again, it sprung back into life.

Oh well, lesson learned!