Greatness of the 4130 movement (and Rolex!)

[JUSTIFIED]

Published by Ben Clymer (Hodinkee.com) about his visit to the Rolex facilities (all 4), which can be viewed at https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/inside-rolex.

The following touched upon the Daytona's 4130 movement:

As I just mentioned, Rolex PR told me that the caliber 4130 from the modern Daytona was regularly updated since its launch with little to no communication. I couldn't believe it. After all, my current lot in life is that of a professional receiver of bullshit emails from Swiss citizens trying to create stories where there aren't any. So, I reached out to a few friends at Rolex, at competing brands, and no one knew anything. Then I spoke to a friend who is an independent watchmaker – he does not work for Rolex but does, with some regularity, work on them, in addition to watches from several other brands. He asked that he remained anonymous. Here is what he had to say:

"Setting Dufour and Voutilainen level movement finishing aside, from a pure engineering perspective, Rolex's 3130 based calibers have reigned supreme for close to 30 years now. No mass-produced movement outside of Rolex comes close to matching their quality, durability, and reliability. They have come terribly close to defining the epitome of what a perfectly conceived mechanical watch movement should be.

Rolex took everything that was good about their 3130 series of movements and applied it to a chronograph. But they didn't stop there. They also took a long, hard, critical look at how they could improve upon the design thinking behind the 3130 to make it even more reliable. They looked at the weak points of the 4030, as well, and determined how best they could improve on what they had learned from it. The result was the 4130.

As for improvements on the 4030, there are several. Top five, in my opinion, would be:

1. Vertical clutch
2. Modularity of automatic section
3. Full balance bridge with height adjustment nut
4. Single point of adjustment for the chronograph system (versus five in the 4030)
5. Parachrome hairspring – I believe it was there from the beginning, sans blue colour at the outset

On top of that, they kept the goodness that was already in the 4030, such as the column wheel and free-sprung, microstella balance wheel (which Rolex equips all of its modern calibers with).

They didn't stop with all of that, either, though. Getting back to your reason for touching base: they have quietly been improving on the design since its debut at the turn of the millennium."