Thread: What types of watches do you like?

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

You know, up until pretty recently Rolex did not make the movmt of the Daytona. It was made by Zenith. These days they make it in-house.

Again quite right. Also before the Zenith they used a Valjoux movement. Here's a little more info on the use of the Zenith caliber 400 movement you're referring to. It was not used as a drop in movement for the Daytona. The caliber 400 was comprised of approximately 250 parts. Rolex would modify some 200 parts to create the Rolex caliber 4030. Some of these modifications were quite important. They changed the hairspring to a brueget coil over, added the micro-stella adjustments and relaxed the beats per hour down from 36,000 to 28,800. This resulted in a movement with improved accuracy, dependability and less frequent service requirements.

At the Baselworld fair in 2000 Rolex introduced the new caliber 4130 in the Daytona. It's the in house movement you also mentioned. That marked the end of the Zenith 400 based caliber 4030. The new caliber 4130 has a power reserve some 12 hours greater than the Zenith based 4030 pushing the Daytona towards a 72 hour power reserve. The longest power reserve ever seen on a chronograph at the time. It also now had the ability to hack the sub second dial. All this despite having less parts (approx. 200) and being a slimmer calibre.

When you're looking at a Daytona watch the easiest way to tell which movement it has is the position of the sub seconds dial. The Zenith based 4030 has it at the 9 o'clock dial position and the in house 4130 has it at 6 o'clock.