The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Do we only have 19 readers of this board that have a B01 movement?

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Cheers
Brez

Aerospace
Airwolf CF-18 Limited Edition
TrancOcean Chronograph LE (mercury silver dial, brown croc, folding clasp)

My Chronomat 01 LE had to go back to Breitling for repairs to the chrono hour sub dial, which wouldn't reset to zero. It came back and the chrono sub dial problem was fixed, but since then it has been consistently out of COSC spec (it runs about -9s/day now whereas before the fix it was +1s/day).

I've also noticed the chrono second hand "stutters" between the 50-55 markers on the dial.

Nice looking watch. Just can't trust it!

Same here!

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"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
2012 GShock 5I Mudman
2012 Breitling Colt 44
2011 Breitling Transocean chrono mercury silver
2011 Rolex Submariner 14060M
2010 Omega Planet Ocean XL
1979 Rolex Date Just two tone

I guess I'm not the only one with this issue. After 4 trips to BUSA for this exact problem, they finally just replaced the entire movement. Now I have subdial issues . . .

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Chronomat 01- Sierra Silver/Steel
Navitimer 01- Limited Edition #1337/2000

I've had my Chronomat B01 Ltd for over a month and it's flawless. Keeps time within about one second per day. Love it!

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An ever changing collection.....

I'm really starting to wonder if some of these issues are actually caused by the much vaunted "conveyer" system that Breitling have developed for the B01, whereby movements effectively move along a track between workstations where employees assemble the same part over and over and over again on each movement as it comes round the track. Sure this process may be fast, but I always think that human operators will frankly just loose concentration and get bored after several hours of doing the same task tens (possibly hundreds) of times a day - and it's then that errors can creep in.

You just need to look at any other semi-automated (i.e. fast) and mass-produced product to see that errors can occur with quite a regularity. Compare that to a watch that is hand-assembled by one watchmaker, and the time invested in that movement by one individual performing numerous different tasks is likely (IMO) to engender more care, less boredom and thus less errors on the part of the watchmaker(s). I'm sure that speed of assembly has at least a proportional tradeoff to an increasing error rate.

Of course they may also be issues with the design of the movement purely by virtue of the fact that it's still incredibly new and untested by years of real-world use. IF there is a design issue it would seem to me that it's more a case of the movement just requiring very careful set-up once built, rather than a truly fundamental design flaw. This would explain why some are performing flawlessly while other experience problems.

As always, JMHO, and I should just point out I have no empirical evidence for this - I'm just surmising and spitballing here.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

I think that's a valid concern. Not everyone involved in the process will be a watchmaker, and I assume that final adjustment / inspection is performed by a certified watchmaker, but they are then dealing with a movement that has passed through numeorus pairs of hands which can't make the job easier. There's a reason why a number of higher end pieces from many manufacturers are advertised as a single watchmaker from start to finish.

Does that mean to say that Breitling is of lesser value compared to other manufacturers due to that reason?

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- This is Ghost Rider requesting a fly-by. - Negative Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.

I never said that.

At the price point I wouldn't expect a single watchmaker to work on the movement from start to finish, simply stating that the absence of that will introduce more risk.

I didn't imply you did.

Thanks for the clarification anyway.

That said, just curious, is your B01 Navi doing OK?

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- This is Ghost Rider requesting a fly-by. - Negative Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.

It has occasional chrono minute jumping issues but not consistent enough for me to demonstrate to an AD / service centre.

Thanks Roff.

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- This is Ghost Rider requesting a fly-by. - Negative Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.

Really!? You're having this issue too? I'm having the same conundrum with sending it back. I know something is wrong, but it jumps so infrequently that I don't think Breitling will be able to replicate the issue if I send it back. As they already replaced the entire movement, they're going to think I'm crazy or something.

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Chronomat 01- Sierra Silver/Steel
Navitimer 01- Limited Edition #1337/2000

I'm keeping an eye on it for now, if it continues to consistently do it intermittently (if that makes sense) then I'm going in to an AD and have the manager watch for as long as it takes to do it.

I don't think that Breitling will think that you are crazy, a refusal to publicly acknowledge that the movement has inherent flaws doesn't mean that they don't know about it - cross reference the Omega 3313.

I'm inclined to agree Driver - if a watchmaker is involved in the process from beginning to end, s/he is much more likely to take an ongoing interest in it (like a competitiveness if I could put it that way). If the watchmaker is truly 'attentive' in her/is work, s/he is much more likely to want to try to produce the best watches on the production run ie. the watches that come back with problems the least. If the watchmaker is just assembling a portion of a watch - IMHO, there will never be that same attention to detail and nor that pride in the watch that s/he produced AND things are much more likely to be missed (who knows, perhaps that's what is happening).

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TAG Professional (Silver/Gold) 2000 - still going strong and kept as spare when Wolf is away.
Breitling B1 (Blue) 2003 - 2008.
Breitling Airwolf (Black Sunburst) 2008 - Date.