32xx movement problem poll and data thread

[Driver8]

Originally Posted by padi56

Lets get things into perspective first the bare uncased movements are tested at the COSC to a AVERAGE of -4+6 seconds to get the swiss chronometer certification time of testing only. And on the COSC 15 day test on any one single day the movement could vary by up to 10 seconds and still pass the the test. The movements are then shipped back to Rolex in there many hundreds stored until wanted on production run. Rolex further checks on a machine in the watches case to this new -2+2 spec much like the COSC time of testing to say its been tested and met the spec on a machine. Now this is not a guarantee it will perform exactly the same everyday for life only the fact it was tested on a machine and met the spec. But it could vary a bit as there are many variables to overcome on the wrist on the wrist. Such as gravity, mainspring power-reserve, different temperature's, shocks on the wrist, metal expansion and contraction, subtle changes in lubrication and friction, plus the many others. Plus a simple fact if watch is out a few minutes over a few months its very easy to adjust with the winding setting crown.

And that's all fine and perfectly correct. I totally agree with you on all of the above.

What isn't fine and perfectly correct however, is when something suddenly changes for the worse and an 18 month old, lightly worn watch that was previously consistent, predictable, easy to self-regulated, and highly accurate, very suddenly starts losing a number of ever increasing seconds per day. In my case, no matter how I wear it or how I rest it (crown up, crown down, dial up, etc) nothing makes it speed up; it just consistently loses more and more time. I'm now up to circa -10 secs a day. This is a problem.

I've owned mechanical watches for nearly 30 years and I've owned Rolexes for almost 25 of them. I also moderate another watch forum dedicated to a different brand. Consequently I have plenty of experience and I don't have rose-tinted glasses about expectations of quartz-like accuracy - far from it. If my watch was an isolated case, I'd just ship it off to RSC and be thoroughly confident it would be fixed. However what we're seeing are numerous cases of the same issue even in this microcosm of Rolex owners here. We've also seen watchmakers telling us that this is caused by a key part wearing ABNORMALLY fast and that this part is currently just replaced with like-for-like as part of the "fix". We are also seeing some people having to send a "fixed" watch back after a matter of months for the same issue. In some cases multiple times.

This is nothing to do with the fully expected and accepted tolerances and limitations of mechanical watches, and everything to do with a problem. A problem that Rolex refuses to publicly acknowledge and are apparently currently unable to permanently fix. Yes, I'm sure that over time Rolex will fix it, but 5 or 6 years would seem to me to be a more than reasonable time for a company with Rolex's resources to resolve it.