I got this winder over 3 years ago and it's still running, but ...

One of the two winders stopped working.  I noticed some very fine plastic dust laying in the bottom of the front of the winder, indicating that something had been rubbing.  I figured for the price compared to other winders it was worth tinkering with, and besides it was completely out of warranty so I didn't have anything to lose at that point.  So I got out my screwdriver and went to work.

It turned out that the bottom winder cradle had worked its way off of its drive mechanism.  The drive mechanism had then failed because the winder cradle wasn't turning freely.  That's the rubbing that the black plastic dust came from.  The little tiny belt, just a black rubber band actually, had worn though the smallest pulley on the winder and then eventually broke.

So the winder cradle needed to be put back on the drive mechanism, the pulley needed to be repaired and the belt/rubber band needed replaced.  I managed to get the cradle back on it's axle where it belonged, that part was fairly easy.  I fixed the pulley by using some heat shrink (the kind used to insulate wiring and such things)on the pulley, shrank it down to fit tight after evening out the pulley with a file.  So the cradle was mounted properly and the pulley was repaired and operational but finding something to use for that little drive belt was a problem.

Eventually through experimentation I found that a plastic stretchable hair tie was the right diameter to fit properly.  Too snug and the thing won't turn as there's too much tension between the drive motor pulley and the drive axle pulley, too little and it just slips on one or both pulleys.  The hair tie was just right, it is resilient and has enough grip on the heat shrink to grab the pulley and turn the mechanism.

I put it all back together and turned it on.  It worked.  That was almost a year ago and it's still working.

This is a cheap winder but the thing is, you can buy an expensive winder and they're still cheap on the inside.  The primary difference that I can see is the material that the case is made of, this is plastic as opposed to wood or leather covering whatever is under the leather.  In my experience and from reading the reviews on more expensive winders the actual results are about the same no matter how much you spend, expensive winders seem to fail at about the same rate as cheap ones.

So if you're handy with tools and can figure out how something like this works from looking at it, you might be happy with this.  I'm happy enough that I think I can fix it the next time it breaks and it's much cheaper than the other offerings for double watch winders.