Thanks for @CTbeforeLP for sending me his brand new AR+F 126500 Daytona so that I could do a tear down on the movement. This is going to be a massive (and somewhat disorganized photo dump). Sorry, it's late and I've been taking photo under the microscope for way too long to edit these and organize them. If I feel motivated tomorrow when the parts are in the cleaning machine I might edit the pics and order them better. But I felt it would be useful to get this post live so that if anyone has specific requests for pics from different angels, I'll be able to get them before I do the cleaning and reassembly of the movement. Also, it's worth noting that @CTime already started a thread about this movement, I think it's best if CTime's thread is the definitive source on this movement. (CTime is a great TD who goes the extra mile to supply information to this community).
Some thoughts about the movement in no specific order:
Some thoughts about the movement in no specific order:
- The movement very clearly has 4130 DNA... it's an altered version of the Peacock (Dandong) SL-4801 movement.
- The rotor is not secured by the three screws, bur rather those three screws allow you to insert a tool to rotate the whole cover which unscrews. This is bad because it would be nice to actually secure the rotor using those three screws, but good in that at least there's nothing glued down as a rotor center decoration (looking at you VSF Omega movements).
- I dislike decoration plates, and this movement has one that makes the automatic works look like gen when they are really a one-way winding ETA knock off.
- The rotor only winds the mainspring. in one direction... this is due to the auto works only having one reversing wheel because there isn't enough space for a second ETA reverser if you need to make things look like a Rolex with a decoration plate (grrrrr....).
- One of the jewels in the Chronograph bridge fell out when I was disassembling the movement. I suspect this was because the bridge had been thinned to allow for the decoration plate over the automatic works. I'll press the jewel back into place, but there's not much "meat" for the jewel to hold on to since the bridge is so thin.
- I like the simplifications that Dandong did to the 4130 design in certain places. For example the pusher spring system used here is simpler than the one used on the 4130 -- there are fewer parts and it's less fiddly to assemble.
- The keyless works is very different from the 4130 but not necessarily in a bad way. I don't know if this design will be easier to upset and require resetting over the 4130, but the nice thing about the 4130 keyless is that it's possible to reset it without removing the dial (if you know exactly where to poke from the side), I'm not sure the same would be possible with this design.
- The rehaut engraving on the case looks pretty good.
- Oh, and another improvement of this design over the 4130 is the chronograph minute counter intermediate wheel. On this design it's attached to the train bridge rather than being removable. I like this choice because this little wheel was one of the most annoying to get aligned and into it's jewel hole when trying to place the chronograph bridge on the 4130.
