Nice action photo indeed!! I'm sure your bloodpressure and heartrate were higher as usual Ralf!!

In my opinion all the Monaco's suffer from this disease, even the ones produced later on. Only the ones which were serviced on time throughout the years could resist this flaw. The Autavia models seem to suffer less from this disease altough I saw many with this problem(regarding the sealing of the caseback). From what I can tell the sealings in the pushers and crowns of both Monaco and Autavia models always have this problem.

The melted rubber is very sticky and almost impossible to clean without any additional cleaning products besides a cloth and some water. When it gets in touch with something, you can be 100% sure it leaves a trace. From the Monaco's and Autavia's I had this problem with the melted material was not dripping or oozing, yet I had to be very carefull. It still can stretch as you see on Ralf's picture, material remains extremly soft and elastic(almost like glue which doesn't dries).

My first Monaco had this problem very serious. It was a nice 1533G which I found in the old stock of my parents shop. At that time I was 19 or 20 years old and didn't had a clue of what the watch was worth and even didn't know Heuer at all!! My father, which is a master watchmaker, gave the watch to me as I liked it so much. I put it on my wrist for two or three days when I suddenly saw some black rubber coming out of the pushers and there were getting also some traces of rubber on the dial. So, here is where the story starts...I'm not going to tell the whole story here and now, maybe another time...

This is the most interesting and usefull part of that story: The thing my father did was placing the watch in the freezer (I think next to some Agnus beef)...for a day or two. This way he could perfectly clean the rubber sealing (which was harder then before) without leaving traces...

This my 1533B which also suffered from this problem, altough the rubber with this watch wasn't melted completely yet:

I hope this might help some of you.

abel