Another vintage Yacht Club question..

I've noticed that the anti-magnetic ring inside some 811AD Yacht Clubs is very
wide and partially overlaps the edge of the rotor, while in others it's much
narrower, not really extending over the back of the movement itself. I'm
guessing that the design was changed at some point, and looking at serial
numbers perhaps the wider ring was in the earlier models?

Was the ring made narrower to allow easier servicing of the watch, and/or was
it found to work just as well if it was narrower? I don't really understand
how it works anyway if it doesn't entirely cover the movement.

The gaurd is to stop the rotor bouncing about , something of an Achilles heel
in a model purposefully marketed for more action. Rubber inplants soak up the
sideways movement.

Thanks! Makes sense.

I've now acquired my YC and it's lovely... Mine has five little bits of rubber
evenly spaced around the guard ring, between that and the outside of the case.
Not sure if the watch would have originally come with those or with some other
type of rubber ring or bumper system.

If I wanted to remove the movement from the case, would it lift out from the
guard ring without removing the ring and bumpers themselves (after undoing the
securing screws obviously), or does the ring and movement come out as one
piece? Mine is the type with the narrower guard ring.

Here's the watch in all its magnificence.. Wears very large for a 36mm, about
as large as I'd wear on my skinny 6" wrist!

Your rubber pieces are factory, i'd think the movement being extracted would
be determinable by the dial size and so a watchmaler would start any
dismantling from the periphery,

Nice lot, first watch i ever i bought on my own (£175)

That's a beauty......Congratulations :o)

Your rubber pieces are factory, i'd think the movement being extracted would
be determinable by the dial size and so a watchmaler would start any
dismantling from the periphery,

Nice lot, first watch i ever i bought on my own (£175)

Wow, £175 - when was that? I paid about 10x that for mine!

I'm a bit of a fettler and I managed to remove and replace the movement in the
case (I wanted to properly clean the screw-thread area where the caseback
attaches). The movement is apparently attached to the outer ring by a couple
of screw plates that were easy to remove, but although that allowed the
movement to rotate with respect to the ring it didn't obviously make it easy
to detach, so I removed the movement and the ring as one piece.

Those little rubber bumpers need to be slid around the periphery until they
are aligned with the obvious notch in the ring that's about the same length as
they are. At that point they can be carefully extracted - they are angled in
such a way that they fit into the groove around the outside of the ring and
underneath the rim of the case itself. Fortunately mine were lubricated and
could be reasonable easily moved, but the rubber is quite old, hard and
fragile so I would imagine that in some cases it might be difficult to get
them out without them disintegrating.

I'm assuming that getting suitable replacements would be very difficult
without having the watch serviced by IWC themsleves at considerable expense,
but if anyone knows otherwise I'd be glad to know. My bumpers are just about
hanging on but it would be nice to fit some fresh ones! It looks like a thick
gasket of the right size with a square cross-section could be used to make
more of these, but I don't know how easy it would be to find such a thing..
Looking at online resources it seems that many watchmakers simply replace the
bumpers with a continuous gasket that probably doesn't secure the movement in
quite the intented way.

'90-clock shop in derbyshire.

Think your 10x's is safe...they're still relatively cheap given that any 160x
realises at least double that.

I'm not sure of the state of play with the search engine on this forum but
there was a japanese ( i think) poster who was enamoured with the YC and
posted a factory diagram ( sort of schematic) highlighting the rubber shocks
in situ. Unfortunately i cannot recall his moniker...with a bit of luck
someone might.

From the 1972 catalogue.

Cheers from the cellar

Thank you greg, much appreciated

Wow, brilliant! So good to have official documentation showing that those five
"pillows" are how the watch was setup originally.