# Seiko 5m543 Kinetic Watch Problems



## hansi (Oct 12, 2006)

Hi. I am a newbie. I have a Seiko 5M43 kinetic watch which has given me sterling service for over eight years. However, recently when I weent away on holiday, I left it at home and used my radio controlled watch as it makes things easier with time zones. When I got back, my Seiko had obviously stopped, so I re-started it following the instruction manual, but since then it has behaved erratically. It now loses time and the the power reserve indicator doesn't go higher than ten seconds. Any help would be appreciated as I like the watch and would not like to think it no longer works properly. Thank you.


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## grey (Apr 29, 2006)

hansi said:


> Hi. I am a newbie. I have a Seiko 5M43 kinetic watch which has given me sterling service for over eight years. However, recently when I weent away on holiday, I left it at home and used my radio controlled watch as it makes things easier with time zones. When I got back, my Seiko had obviously stopped, so I re-started it following the instruction manual, but since then it has behaved erratically. It now loses time and the the power reserve indicator doesn't go higher than ten seconds. Any help would be appreciated as I like the watch and would not like to think it no longer works properly. Thank you.


Hi Hansi and welcome to the forum.

I have a 5M42 which did the same thing after a few years. I sent it to Seiko Service in UK (as a principle I always send items direct to the manufacturer on the basis that it might be less hassle for their service department to do any repairs than writing to me with an estimate of the cost), and sure enough they returned it working perfectly along with a maintenance sheet, all free of charge!









But then late last year I was sick and didn't wear it regularly, and it stopped again. After the normal restart procedure it would run for a short time and stop again. I then gave it several minutes of gentle rotation and started wearing it regularlyand it began running again - perfectly.

However this was the beginning of something much more serious!







I had already begun looking for a replacement and I started collecting old Seiko Automatics from the 1960s and 1970s and wearing them in rotation to keep them going - one during work, and then two in the evenings/weekends - this is how the disease starts! The result was that I wasn't wearing the Kinetic regularly and now it only runs for a day or so. Half an hour of constant movement gets the power indicator up to 30 seconds, which used to be enough to enable it to run indefinitely, but now it still stops after a day or so.

So I guess the bad news is that eventually the power cell stops holding its charge if you don't use it regularly, so I can only suggest if it doesn't respond to several minutes of rotation to get the power indicator up to maximum, rather than taking it back to the place you bought it, you send it to your local Seiko Service Dept. and put upon their good nature. The worst that can happen is you get an estimate for repair. Sorry if I can't be more technical,

Best regards, Graham


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## bry1975 (Feb 6, 2004)

Hi Sirs,

You need to buy the seiko ugrade kit, this includes a rechargeable battery.

Regs

Bry



grey said:


> hansi said:
> 
> 
> > Hi. I am a newbie. I have a Seiko 5M43 kinetic watch which has given me sterling service for over eight years. However, recently when I weent away on holiday, I left it at home and used my radio controlled watch as it makes things easier with time zones. When I got back, my Seiko had obviously stopped, so I re-started it following the instruction manual, but since then it has behaved erratically. It now loses time and the the power reserve indicator doesn't go higher than ten seconds. Any help would be appreciated as I like the watch and would not like to think it no longer works properly. Thank you.
> ...


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## grey (Apr 29, 2006)

bry1975 said:


> Hi Sirs,
> 
> You need to buy the seiko ugrade kit, this includes a rechargeable battery.
> 
> ...


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## bry1975 (Feb 6, 2004)

Not really sure sorry. 



grey said:


> bry1975 said:
> 
> 
> > Hi Sirs,
> ...


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

If I remember right, the older Kinetics need quite a lot of wearing to get a decent charge back up, they are not like automatics that need a few swirls to get going, it might take a while to get up to useable charge, I think there are special bits of kit that will charge a kinetic electricly if you dont want to do it yourself....


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