Seiko 7002 NH35

The Seiko 7002.


A picture I stole from the internet.

Caught between the 2nd generation "slim case" 6309s (which it replaced in 1988) and later 7S26 powered SKXs (which replaced it in 1996), and confused with both, the 7002 has always been a bit lost. The most obvious identifying feature is the lack of a day window, unlike both its predecessors and successors. Aside from this, and the simplified crown tube, its rather similar to a late 6309. Again like the 6309 but very importantly unlike the SKXs, the crown is at 4 o'clock.

7002s are not very valuable at the moment, so there is not a massive incentive to fix them. There seem to be plenty of dead ones or poorly working ones available cheaply on various internet auction sites. The cost of having a 7002 movement repaired or rebuilt is simply more, in any first world country, than even a good, let alone a fair, 7002 is worth.

Unable to resist I bought a 7002 as a project. Now the dilemma of how to fix it. Working 7002 movements are virtually unobtainable. The closely related 7009, common in many cheap Seiko 5s of the early 90s, is fairly easily to get, often still in said Seiko 5s. Unremarkable Seiko 5 dress watches of the early 90s, made and sold in the Phillipines etc are often very cheap. I managed to find two of these, one even with a 4 o'clock crown but for various reasons the attempts failed. Swopping over date wheels of the wrong colour, removing day wheels (the 7009 is the day/date version of the 7002) or just because the movements themselves were in poor condition. Maybe buying cheap watches on Ebay was a bad idea?
I may still revisit this idea as I have bits of another 7002 lying around. I see recently that an Ebay seller is offering refurbished what he calls "7002/7009 hybrid" movements for sale as replacements for 7002 divers. Clever man. 7002/7009 hybrid sounds fancy but appear just to be a 7009A with a 7002 dial fitted thereby covering the day wheel (which may or may not be removed.) And indeed why not, tis a good idea.

In the meantime however I found a source of reasonably priced new movements and so decided to go that route. SII non-branded Seiko movements, used by many micro-brand mechanical watch makers these days, and bigger outfits like Invicta and Vostok, are rather reasonably priced.
And so:

A lovely new SII NH35A, the date only version of the NH36A, the non-branded version of the Seiko 4R35, the upgraded version of the 7S36 successor to the 7S26, standard Seiko diver movement for many years and replacement for the 7002. And all of them are the same size. Isnt that handy?

NH35 sitting snugly in a second gen 7002 case. 

Now had this been a Seiko with a 3:45 or 3:00 crown our story would have ended here. In fact my wife has such a watch, a SKX031, and an NH36 proved to be a direct swop for the failed 7S26, some issues with the crown aside. 

But the 7002 has a 4 o'clock crown. So lining everything up was going to be a problem. In the end I chose the easy route and decided to ditch the date window, which meant going with a custom dial. I happened to have a custom 7002 dateless dial lying around from aforementioned failed (for now) 7002 repair project so I cut its feet off and attached it with the 3 and a half adhesive pads you should be able to make out in the above picture. Had a used a custom dial designed for a 7S26 or later movement it would probably just have fitted. 

The next issue was the crown. One easily forgotten thing to keep in mind which movement swopping: the stem must match the movement, but the crown must match the case. The supplied NH35 stem screwed happily into the 7002 crown. The only issue was getting the length EXACTLY right. This was achieved using a micrometer, some calculations, small sidecutters, 1000 grit sandpaper, patience and a few frustrating hours. Mainly spent

sanding. Slow, but the safest way to shorten a stem in tiny mounts. The NH35 hacks and winds so there is a lot going on with the stem.

Face stuck in place, on go the hands, in this case from some 60s Seiko dress watch that closely approximate second gen 6105 hands. Why? I felt they matched the face. Weirdly the second hand from that set refused to fit so I a strange black second hand that I think is from a fake set for a 7002 or SKX of some sort. Now rushing down the home straight, as one does at the end of a long project, in went a standard 7002 chapter ring, new standard 7002 bezel insert on old 7002 bezel, standard 7002 glass.
Case, case back, bezel, chapter ring and glass all came from the 7002 donor wreck.

Chucked it on a NATO I had lying around for now. I dont have an intact standard 7002 to compare it to, so here it is next to my second gen 6309. And a 6105 homage (more about it later) recently acquired just to show how far off my ideas of it looking 6105ish were.

You could of course do this with any dateless dial and hands and there are many things I could have done differently, but I quite like it. With a new NH35 it keeps time well and I rather appreciate the addition of winding and hacking.

Some winter testing up in the Swedish mountains.

A group test of the right sort.

Here is a link to a group test in an American motoring magazine:
http://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/2014-honda-civic-ex-l-vs-2014-kia-forte-ex-2014-mazda-3-i-touring-2014-toyota-corolla-s-2014-volkswagen-jetta-se-comparison-test

Go and read it.
Even if you feel the cars, being that weird third-world but not quite mix, are not quite relevant to you. If you live in South Africa they are fairly relevant and take heart, in 10 years you might be able to afford them.

But read the test, because its good. Its beautifully written, humorous and above all it takes the cars seriously.
I both love - and despair at - the fact that only Americans can be bothered to skid-pan test "cheap" saloons. Also they call them "small sports saloons" which is just lovely, almost makes you feel good about them,

The Brits would just drive around the block, ask where the diesel version is and make nasty jokes about salesmen and pensioners. Americans call Mazda3s small sporting saloons and skid pan test them, the English dismiss a 535d M-Sport as "copier salesman's car". Or at least reminding them of one.
Just because you don't drive a Porsche 911 GT3RS, or a Megane R20-something full of scaffolding, doesn't mean it is impossible that you care about driving.

Why is Car & Driver so much better than the rest?
Well maybe the issue with the rest is image: their image. Do you mind being seen as a slightly geeky gear/petrolhead? Or must you be seen as so awesomely cool that you cannot be impressed by anything less than a La Ferrari. (Unless its some sort of stupid irrelevant track-day only car.)
And its not that the simple colonial Yanks are impressed by every old thing: read that test, they lambaste the Toyota and Honda, and really let the Kia's dynamics have it. While liking the Mazda and the Jetta. Because despite what our motoring presses tell us, while noone makes fall-apart in 3 years lemons anymore (?) there are still HUGE differences in how these cars are to drive.
Which should matter to you, unless you absolutely cannot drive.

Old lenses on new cameras, II

Any search on the subject of mounting old manual lenses on modern cameras will inevitably lead you to discussion of modern mirror-less interchangeable lens cameras, if not specially the micro four thirds format. Simpler bodies, no mirror mechanism and a shorter distance to the sensor make these modern small cameras more flexible.
So, how well does it work, compared to the Canon EOS we tried last?

Here we have a Panasonic DMC GF2 M4/3 camera, you can see the exposed sensor (thank goodness it has a dust-reduction system) and lying next it an example of a modern M4/3 lens, in this case the wonderfully compact 14-42mm "powerzoom" lens. Below it lie an old, worthless, M42 lens - an unremarkable Wiestar 35mm 2.8 in this case - and a cheap M42-M4/3 adaptor. Unlike the M42-EOS adaptor, this one is unfortunately quite deep. In the leading picture we can see this lens fitted.

So, how does it work? Handling is a little awkward due to the small light camera with the long heavy lens jutting out ahead of it - 2cms of essentially hollow adapter does not help - the center of gravity is rather far forward. Aside from this - rather well. The LCD screen on the GF2 is good and the ability to manually focus using this screen with a zoom focus preview function far exceeded my expectations. To my amazement I did far better with this camera-lens combo on a day out than I did with the EOS 300D and manual lens. Nonetheless, forget about taking pics of toddlers with this, not ones that are awake in any case. As with the EOS you get through the lens metering.  

The smaller sensor of most MILCs (Samsung, Sony and Fuji use a APS-C sized sensor, but the M4/3 is smaller, and the Nikon 1s and some Pentax MILCs are smaller still) and other factors means that even more obscure old lenses can be used, for instance C-mount CCTV lenses or M39s. This is fun but the smaller sensor brings with it a rather large problem. the crop factor. That nice wide 35mm...its equivalent to 70mm on this camera. Seeing as most old lenses you are going to be using were intended for 35mm film cameras, they tend to be in "longer" focal lengths. 35mm, 55mm, 85mm, and 135mm seem to be the most common sizes for M42s for example. These all end up being rather long on the GF2. Pity. 

In the end the most useful lenses for the M4/3 cameras are the wonderful modern pancake lenses. 

Finally, largly for fun, a M39 Jupiter-8 50mm 2.0 lens from my Zorki, working well on the GF2 with a rather compact L39-M4/3 adaptor. Quite nice and compact - and you will simply never get a M/L39 lens to work on an DSLR. But 100mm effective focal length...well look at it this way: For a 100m f2.0 lens, its very small and light indeed! 

To summarize

Using M42 and M39 lenses on Panasonic/Olympus M4/3:

Aperture preview:               No

Camera aware of aperture:  No

Metering:                            Yes

Available modes:                 M, A

Old lenses on new cameras, I

Digital cameras, like all other "tech" fields, have advanced extremely fast. From essentially not existing 20 years ago to the rapidly advancing market we see today. I shall try not to terribly upset serious photographers by saying lens technology is not advancing, but it is certainly not advancing at quite the same rate. A digital camera from 15 years ago is almost entirely useless today, glass from 35 years ago is however a different story. The biggest metamorphosis that SLRs have gone through is arguably* not the change to digital but rather the change to auto-focus more than a decade earlier. That is when some of the biggest changes where made, when new lens-mounts appeared and old ones disappeared. This leaves us with many good lenses that suffer from being both manual focus and designed for an obsolete mount. i.e. useless. A waste of good glass. 

Or are they? 

If you are prepared to with manual focus, then no, this is not the case at all. These lenses have no motors, and no way of electronically communicating with the camera (and nothing to say, had they the means to say it) so obviously they are never going to auto-focus, however physically fitting them to a current lens mount is no more complicated than using the right adapter. Oh the joy of fitting together two pieces of metal - use a third piece. Like this one:

Pictured: A piece of metal.

A Fotodiox M42 to EOS adapter. M42 (Pentax screw) being a very popular old manual focus 35mm film SLR (and rangefinder) screw type mount and EOS - more correctly EF or EF-S - being the current electronic bayonet mount used by Canon EOS auto-focus film and digital cameras. 

Sadly its not entirely that simple (when is it?), complications arise from the distance from lens to the sensor, if you can't get this right the lens wont focus, or at least not to infinity. I won't try to explain this here but the end result is that some moderns are utterly unsuitable for using adapters (like the Nikon F-mount) and others will require longer/deeper adapters. (Like micro 4/3 but more on that in another post.) The Canon EF mount however lends itself very well to this endeavor, so I bought myself a cheap Canon EOS 300D. 

Historically significant as the first sub $1000 DSLR, today just a cheap camera with a nasty plastic case. Notice the EF-S bayonet mount on the camera, next to it is a matching Canon EF-S 18-55mm kit lens. At the of the lens you will see the electronic ("CPU") contacts, you will see the corresponding contacts on the camera at the bottom of the mount. The EF-S is an electronic mount - all communication between the camera and lens occurs through those contacts. (Unlike, say an Nikon F-mount.)

Here the adapter is locked into place. Actually, because EF-S is bayonet and the M42 lens is a screw mount, its easier to leave the adapter attached to the lens.

And there is our vintage lens, in this case a Chinon 55mm f1.7 M42, the same lens fitted to the EOS 300D in the first picture. As you see there are no CPU or mechanical contacts on the adapter. The only control that the M42 lens expected to receive in any case was when to stop-down the aperture - the Canon EF does this electronically so the function is lost. Aperture control occurs via a beautifully machined ring near the rear of the lens, focusing at very small apertures can be hard due to the viewfinder (already poor on the 300D, like most autofocus SLRs) getting rather dark, this one just has to live with. Likewise the poor viewfinder can make focusing itself hard, especially with the lens at f1.7. Practice is needed here, an alternate solution is to fit your camera with an old-school split image focusing screen. (Starting from around $25 from China - I am not sure yet how good these are.) The better viewfinders that higher end DSLRs possess could well make this task either - I guess I should have conducted my experiments with a EOS 20D, not a 300D...

On the Canon you get through the lens metering, meaning you can use either manual or aperture-priority modes (you control the aperture yourself from the lens) and you will probably get the correct exposure. I say probably because, especially with a fast lens like this Chinon, you can easily "run out" of workable shutter speeds in bright light.

So obviously there are drawbacks. The rewards? Well aside from the extreme cheapness of these lenses - that Chinon 55mm 1.7 cost me 120kr (less than $20) and I have a Wiestar 35mm and 135mm that cost me even less - there is some sense of satisfaction in using these old lenses, in addition to the fact that the lenses themselves are often beautiful. The Chinon is a work of art compared to the frankly icky plastic Canon kit lens pictured above. 

To summarize

Using M42 lenses on Canon EOS:

Aperture preview:               No

Camera aware of aperture:  No

Metering:                            Yes

Available modes:                 M, Av (Manual and Aperture Priority if you don't speak Canon.)

*I argue that it is.

My 2010 VW POLO TSI GT DSG

My Mk5 Polo, or to use its full grandiose title, Polo TSI GT DSG Car of the year edition. Though it only says Polo TSI on the back. GT is a spec level in Sweden, I believe the UK equivalent would be SEL. The Car of the year edition was a limited run model to celebrate winning COTY and was 1.2 TSI GT Polo with DSG box and RCD310 satnav system. It was the only way to get a 1.2 TSI Polo in Sweden in 2010 and so I bought one.
I bought it as an economical commuter car and a counter point to my weekend toy, a 1988 535i. It replaced a 2007 320i and this should be kept in mind as it colours my view of the Polo.

I feel that the Polo Mk5 is, alongside the Jetta 6, one of the best looking cars VW have ever produced. But we are not here to discuss styling…
The two most interesting features of this car are the TSI engine and DSG box, and they do indeed define its character. The 1.2 TSI manages 175MN, the same as a typical early ‘90s 2.0, but more amazingly this is all available from below 2000rpm, giving a very un-small feeling. The rapid changing DSG gearbox adds to the surrealness of the experience. In normal town driving the engine virtually never exceeds 2000rpm and there is really no need to. Full throttle will easily break the traction of the 215 16” tyres, on winter tyres you are limited to part throttle.  Very diesel-like, aside from the 6000rpm redline.
I bought this car remembering the small fun VWSA products of my youth, specifically the CitiGolf (Golf Mk1) and Polo Playa (Seat Ibiza Mk2). The Polo is small, light and powerful but comparatively so refined that a lot of the excitement is lost. Make no mistake, this can be a good thing, a 300kms trip was to be dreaded in a Golf 1, the Polo takes it in its stride.
But somehow you never get the same feeling driving it fast on small roads. Its utterly undramatic. The steering is electric, and while it has excellent feel compared to say, a Fabia or Clio, it doesn’t give you the detailed feedback that you need to become one with the car. The throttle response is best described as distant – you’re merely giving orders to engine room, not pulling the lever yourself – and the DSG7 gearbox is simply never in the right gear. Push down violently on the throttle and there is a delay, an embarrassing pause as if the ECU is asking itself “Did he mean to do that?”, come suddenly off the throttle, especially in Sport mode, and the engine will linger, roaring at high revs, as if caught out by your lack of consistency. This is all really a pity because on the odd occasion that you and the car get it all right, the power delivery is very impressive. So much torque, so little weight, and the gearbox holding the engine in its powerband – by small car standards seemingly endless acceleration. Compared to the almost amateurish behavior of the powertrain the handling is very polished. The damping is as good as it is reasonable to expect from a small, simply-sprung car, the compromise between roll control and comfort excellently chosen, the ride adequate despite 35 profile tyres. But it isn’t very interesting, the back simply follows the front, there is no adjustability, no subtlety to it. It’s amusing purely from how quickly you can move from point to point on country roads, with confidence and at speeds you would simply never match in most of its competition.
In winter however if’s a very different story. This is a car that relies on grip.  Without it there is abundant understeer which if you try to push through, as you can on some cars, you risk swinging out the tail or simply sliding sideways. Put simply the Polo does not cope well in conditions of low grip. It always feels skittish and unstable and any attempts to play are quickly interrupted by the typically-VAG overbearing ESP system.
For the keen driver then, and even more so someone with memories of small VWs of the past, this car is, and indeed has been to me, a disappointment. However to a normal sane person it is a great car. The quality of the interior is excellent , its an outstandingly easy and relaxing car to commute in, and it does around 6.0L per 100kms  (someone else can translate that into ridiculous MPG) even in heavy traffic. My lighter footed and more conscientious wife can easily achieve less than 5.5L per 100kms, in other words easily less than the real world figures for a wretched eco-diesel.

MORE POWER FOR THE PEOPLE! A 3.0 SIX FOR EVERYONE.

Or: The frustrating paucity of genuine road test data.

Being able to read in more than one language allows you to read even more road tests. Only reading English can give one a skewed perspective; What the Americans say about cars is best ignored, the Australian and South African markets are somewhat insular and irrelevant. The British, while masters of the language, only appear to care about diesels. 

And so I was reading a Swedish comparative road test: The (then - early 2010) new Volvo S60 2.0T vs its competition from the usual German triplets. I was actually reading this test (does one need a reason, really?) for more into the featured ethanol burning A4 2.0 TFSI Quattro when I glanced across to the figures for the BMW 325i, a car I had hitherto ignored - because obviously no one can afford to run a normally aspirated 3.0 straight 6 in this day and age of downsizing and forced induction - when I was socked to see it was the most economical car in the test, beating it’s 1.8 and 2.0 blown 4pot competition. Surely not? But no, the testers were quite sure, despite being the fastest and most powerful car on test it used the least fuel. (and put out the least CO2, if you care about or even believe in that sort of thing - I assure you, your taxman does.) For the kind of practical and sensible reasons that could only be understood by a Swede the Audi was still pronounced the winner, but that’s hardly the point here. The point is that here is a “big six” you could afford to commute in, and what’s more, how did I not know about this?

Now having something to set my obsessive mind to, much very enjoyable research followed. The late 2007 facelift of the BMW e90 included, in addition to the “Efficient Dynamics” set of modifications, the new direct injection N53 in place of the the Valvetronic N52 but only in Europe. In the case of the 325i the engine was now a 3.0 instead of a 2.5. Power remained the same, torque increased slightly but the headline is the dramatically improved economy. Comparing tests done on the pre- and post-facelift 325is done by the same Swedish mag, a dramatic improvement indeed. Suddenly there is no need to bother with a Golf GTi or Skoda Octavia RS. 
This knowledge of course, in addition to requiring visits to the nearest BMW dealer to check their “Premium Used” section, and replacing excitement at the launch of the new forced induction only f30 with a slightly bittersweet feeling, also lead me to suddenly wonder about a e60 5-series. Didnt it also receive the N53 and Efficient Dynamics kit - yes, in Europe it did. Doesn't that mean it will also be amazingly economical? Should I not in fact perform my daily commute in a 530i auto? No, apparently not, in the single tests each I can find of the post 2007 525i and 530i is was pretty thirsty. Sad. How can it use so much more fuel than the (only) 220kg lighter e90?

I don’t know and I am unlikely to find out due to the paucity of information I am forced to work with. Why does nobody test these cars? When someone tests a 3-series, why it is always 320d? (or a 335i?) Why wasn't more fuss made of the N53 and its amazingly economy? Why where we being told to buy 2.0 turbo 4s, when we could have had one of the last attainable normally aspirated sixes? Why it is so hard to find any test on any BMW with name ending in -25i? Yes I know I am very boring, I want to sit and read fuel consumption figures, I want to compare the e90 and e60s and work out some kind of pattern - because I live in the real world were petrol costs money and what to see what the real costs are. 

I am sick of this massive diesel preference, specifically in the English motoring press. Comparing the tested figures of the last, now sadly gone e90 325i to the 320d of the same time show that you’d really have to do a lot of mileage for total cost of ownership (ignoring depreciation) of the 325i to be greater than that of the 320d. Now don't get me wrong, the 320d is a great car. I dont like diesels but I am forced to admit that it is excellent…but compared to the incredible joys of a 3.0 BMW straight6? For similar money, can you get your head around that?

And yet nobody knows, for these cars are simply ignored.

Edit 16 months later:
It appears, sadly, that the N53 suffered a fair amount of reliability issues, specifically injector problems and now appears to be largely dead. Even in the F10 its place has been taken by the new turbo 4 bangers. I say appear because, as always, there is virtually no information on this, and in any case relatively few N53 engined E90s were sold. (Because you were all to busy buying diesels, weren't you?)

But to end this on a more positive note, here is the article in the original gansta: (Excuse the language.) http://www.gizoogle.net/xfer.php?link=http://gtdriver.tumblr.com/post/17656547265/more-power-for-the-people-a-3-0-six-for-everyone&sa=U&ei=umqwUc3hJO-N7AaEsoCYBw&ved=0CCoQFjAG&usg=AFQjCNHn6JuJURy5DG6q5kre93rr_l2oMg

Now thats a small computer. HTPC anyone?

A lot of what I watch on TV is from the internet, in avi format etc or not even a TV program. Youtube, Google maps, photos and such. In other words I find myself wanting a computer connected to my TV. Now I've watched downloaded .avis for a long time - and I refuse to sit and do it on my PC because I am not a teenager, so I have tried various other approaches. Many years ago I even had a huge noisy tower PC connected to my TV setup - it was the easiest/cheapest way of watching DVDs at the time (South Africa, long story) - but subsequently I've tried more civilized methods like DivX DVD players or even USB compatible models and these have worked to a acceptable degree. This all culminated in the purchase of a PS3 three years ago. An excellent media device and cost-effective (at the time) Bluray player.
And I have never gotten around to building a proper HTPC as such. (Unless I count my fulltower AMD K6 based DVD playing monster of the 90s.) They have always seemed too expensive, too big and too noisy. And recently, not powerful enough - the PS3 narrowly beat out a Asus EEE nettop. (No optical drive and I am suspicious of Atoms...)

Yet here I have so something that could be called an HTPC. Its tiny, its silent and it cost me about $50.
An Android minipc it calls itself....essentially a smartphone minus the screen and battery, i.e the expensive bits. A9 dual core CPU and 1GB RAM putting it on par with a typical  2011 smartphone, think iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S2.
It runs some variant of Android 4.1 and so far seems to work perfectly.  Its fast enough and played Youtube HD beautifully. Amazingly my Logitech 2.4ghz wireless keyboard worked straight away. I chose the cheaper non-bluetooth version and so have two USB ports, a microSD reader, Wifi and a miniHDMI port that obviously also handles the sound.  Which seems to work fine as well. So far Ive connected it to my 23" Benq LED screen that serves as a bedroom "TV"  (yes I know, disgusting first world habit, multiple TVs...).
More tests will follow. I am specifically interested in streaming avis via SMB (vs DLNA) and image quality on a real TV.

In this general spirit of Androidness I even made this blog post on my Galaxy Note, which I can say was a plague.  Be fun to see how the formatting turns out...

(Edit 2013-05-06 - Fixed formatting on PC...)