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Inside the Best Replica Rolex Daytona |
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Articles -
Watchmasters Corner
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Written by Ziggy Zumba
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Page 1 of 4
This article is a fascinating look at how the counterfeiters managed to duplicate the inhouse Rolex Daytona movement that is used in all Daytonas from 2000 on by modifying a common ETA 7750. Ziggy tears a replica Daytona apart to see how it ticks...
Well finally, a review of the “Mystery” 7750 movement in the new Daytona.
Lets get right
into the details on this highly modified 7750.
First point, why use a genuine Swiss
Valjoux movement when there are plenty of copies available?? Why not use an Asian 7750 as a
base movement?
Probably for one reason and one reason only, the tolerances, quality,
finish precision, etc, on the real one all add up to give you one thing - POWER. Once you see
all the extra gears (and there are lots of them) then you’ll see that using anything but the
real movement is useless. Add all this to the Asian model, and it probably won’t start or run
at all.
I remember stating that I figured it was impossible to modify this movement to
the new layout. Well it has been done, and probably in a way that was not thought of (at least
not by me). Kind of like the new inventions on Infomercials, once you see it, it seems so
simple, “Why didn’t I think to re-label spray paint cans and sell it as instant hair
replacement” (got to give Ron Popeill credit where credit is due).
The movement was only
disassembled to a certain level; there are a few reasons for this as you’ll see. As much as it
would have been even more informative to have a complete teardown, remember that the added
parts are all replica parts, and therefore don’t have the same quality or tolerances of the
real product. Total disassembly was far too risky, and also an unknown area, not sure what
would be found and exactly how it was put together.
Background
Some
background info is required if everyone is to understand how these modifications were
accomplished, why they were needed, and what the end results are.
Until 2000, Rolex used
Zenith El-Primero movements in their Daytona models. This movement has running seconds at the
9 position, 12-hour counter at the 6 position, and the 30-minute counter at the 3 position on
the dial. Funny that Rolex is supposed to be setting the standard in movements, yet it took
them 26 years to come up with their own in-house movement for the Daytona.
Post 2000
Daytona’s (which is what this latest model is trying to replicate) are a problem to copy
because of the sub-dial locations. The new models have running seconds at the 6 position, 12
hour counter at the 9 position, and 30-minute counter at the 3 position.
The big problem
is trying to find a movement that has this layout, there isn’t one (apart from the real Rolex
one). So this modified 7750 is trying to replicate the new dial layout; and it does do it;
although as you’ll see there are some drawbacks and possible problems down the
road.
What is needed to get the right sub-dial layout?
So a standard 7750
has the following sub-dial layout:
The new Daytona has this layout:
How to go from an original 7750 to the new layout,
is to add lots of gears to move the outputs across the dial face to the new
locations.
New movement
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 14 August 2007 )
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