Recently I have been getting a lot of requests from repair customers to replace the crown seal(s) and pusher seals on vintage Heuers. The pusher seals are pretty straight forward but the crown seals are a bit tricky. I have taken apart a couple of Autavia 1163 crowns to see what is really needed. Here is what I found:
1) if you remove the steel cap on the back it will most likely be damaged and not reusable - see pic below - damaged cap on the right. The cap to the left of it came from another WP crown and was turned down to fit (its a compression fit and has to be just the right size).
2) both of the crowns I took apart had seals that had turned to goop so I am not sure what they looked like original but the depth in the crown for the seal is 1.5mm suggesting a tube seal as opposed to a single O ring seal.
3) I had to do a lot of searching to find something that would work and one of the responses to a prior post suggested Cousins in the UK for seals. They had what I needed - 2.50 x 0.65 x 3.80mm.
4) I have used 50/50 Simple Green and water to remove the goop soaking the parts overnight but there are solvents that work faster. However, lacquer thinner does not seem to work well with this kind of goop.
5) I put the new cap on the crown and pushed the seals (2) gently through the opening with tweezers (dull ends to avoid damage). This was not hard at all and given the depth I don't think a single seal will always make proper contact.
In the end it turned out to be a fairly simple solution and may be possible with the stem still in place. I do not have WP pressure tester but if someone else has one and wants to do a test, I will supply this crown temporarally to find out how it works out.