Epos Triple Date Moon Phase Chronograph, Valjoux 7751 Movement, Minor Adjustment

I don't do much tinkering with watches anymore since I have Familial (or Essential) Tremor. As the name implies, it causes shaky hands and is passed down from parent to child. Lucky me. Anyway, this Epos watch was bought in 1999 (for a whopping sum at the time of $697) after we'd paid off our house loan. It was a time to celebrate and my wife and I each decided to splurge on something nice. This is what I chose to buy. It had been having minute-counter issues for a number of years. When the chronograph was started, the central seconds hand would go round-and-round as it should but the minute counter would haphazardly either count or not count up the minutes (and since the hour counter was tied to the minute counter, its movement was also intermittent).

I didn't wear the watch much lately because I'd gotten other nicer watches over the years but I pulled the Epos out a few days ago to wear it. That's when I decided to try and fix the problem. It is not a small task to delve into an automatic chronograph movement, and it is compounded immensely by both shaky hands and the fact that this chronograph is additionally complicated with a 24-hour pointer, triple-date (day/date/month) functions and moon phase. I'd watched several videos on YouTube prior to taking the plunge, so I figured I knew pretty much what the problem was and how deep into the watch's bowels I had to go.

Old Barracuda's Old Wiring Woes

I hopped in the '66 Barracuda Formula S at church one night in the dark after instrument practice and something strange happened. I turned on the headlights and very soon after I started driving, the dash lights went out and the under-dash "map" light came on. As an added bonus, the two C-pillar dome lights no longer worked, as I'd found out since I was fiddling with the headlight dimmer switch to try and get the map light to go off. Get this, all three map/dome lights are controlled by the headlight switch - it makes no sense why one light would be on steady and the other two won't turn on. I figured it wasn't a big deal to drive home with no dash lights, and they did actually come on (and the map light went out) about halfway home.

Everything's fine, right? Apparently not. When I got home my brother texted me and said he saw no taillights or brake lights when I drove away from church. Hmm. Well at least they probably came back on when the lights "fixed" themselves on the way home. So, today I started digging into the 58-year-old dash wiring (the car was built November 1965). I wasn't sure what would cause this issue, so I started at the headlight switch. The easiest way to get to it was to pull the instrument cluster. It's not a terrible job but it isn't trivial. The steering column also had to be lowered to get the dash out.