The best movement to get in a pam?

[hpaul]

Hi everyone,
I'm new here and in love with the design of the Panerai. I mainly collect vintage gens and I also have a few cheap asian watches (eg. Ik Colouring) that I liked the look of.

I spent quite a few hours reading and searching through the forum, including the excellent Pam review guide. Before I decide which Pam to get, I would like the opinion of more educated and experienced members on movements. Much is written about cosmetic attributes, swissness, swan necks, but I could not find much about reliability and ease and cost of service / finding a replacement.

I like the idea of an automatic GMT version, but would also consider hand-winding movements. One of the watches I was looking at had a A7750 movement. In another post of a repair person I read he would never touch the complicated and unreliable A7750 (with chronograph), so that put me off a bit, is the pam version without chronograph but with gmt better?.

Is there a guide somewhere that describes the different movements and how accurate, how reliable and how easy to service / repair or replace they are and the typical cost of that. I have looked at watches with movements described as Asian 21 jewels, Asian 23 jewels, Unitas hand winding, A 7750, A 7753. Which is the pick of the bunch if I want a reliable accurate moment which doesn't give too many headaches if something does go pop.

Thanks :cool-new:

 

[genuine-fakes]

They do exist, I don't think that there are many pam cases around for which you can slot in a 7750 or chronograph movement. When you buy a new case it will come with a movement ring and crown height set up for one of the manual Unitas movements, the 6497 with seconds at 9, 6498 with seconds at 6, and the less common 6503; this is like the 6497 but has a date at 3 o'clock, so it would gain a better resemblance to Panerai models. All of these movements are vey reliable, and parts are widely available.

Dials are very easy to come by for the 6497 and 6498, but harder for other models, and again they are made to fit a particular case size, i have noticed a trend in size for sold Unitas dials where the diameter is one for pam cases(37.5mm), and one for all the others (38.9mm).

a very good website for comparing movements is the database on Roland Ranfft's website, there are almost no movements that are not on there. http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&&2uswk

when sopping around for a movement, bear in mind that there are asian copies of the 6497 and 6498, some of them are very good like the chinese seagull st3600, it may be wise to buy a donor watch for about 100 dollars and then you have loads of spares!

good luck! Charlie

 

[kilowattore]

You can't go wrong with an a6497, which is the manual wind movement used with most of the base models.
A7750 works fine as well, but it's much more complicated so you might have a hard time finding a watchsmith near you who's keen to work on it. We have a number of watchsmiths here that could help you in case of need though.
Hope this helps

 

[ShiroTenshi]

A6487 /6498 hands down.


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[shelby1501]

+1 on 6497. Very reliable, has a good power reserve, no "loud rotor" problem and fun to wind. If only all PAMs had that movement inside.

 

[ALE7575]

Unfortunately , if you like a concrete rep PAM Model you will not have several options of movements.

Therefore, for a concrete watch you will have to go to available options, many times only one movement

Of course manual Asian 6497 are the most reliable in PAM reps
A7750, 7753 are just more complicated but good and reliable enough and mainly without chrono function like occurs in a GMT

Anyway, bear always in mind you are talking about reps, with a limited Quality Control, then you can have a problem even with the most "reliable" rep movement, it is a luck matter. But the price is accordingly as you can see

As said: Good luck
ALE