A.Lange & Sohne - Details...

Details...

Nov 04, 2020,12:40 PM

I bought this DD40 preowned, in January 2020, from a local dealer. It was one of the first batch made, originally sold in 2015, with a warranty that expired in September 2020. I knew that the 3255 movement day/date was supposed to change within a few minutes of midnight, and I noticed right after I got it that the day/date changed too late, often at about 12:17am. This was a well-known issue with these early 3255's. There were threads about it on other forums several years ago, and supposedly Rolex had a quick, easy fix for it. So I sent the watch into RSC in January of this year, and RSC returned it to me several weeks later, saying it was fixed. But in reality the problem wasn't fixed. I then sent it back to RSC a second time, and it got stuck there for about 4 months due to the pandemic shutdown. When RSC reopened and sent the watch back to me, the date was slightly better (changed about 12:07am) but now the watch was running a bit too slow. So I sent it back to RSC for a third time this summer (after RSC reassured me by phone that it should be changing within about 2 minutes of midnight), at which point RSC said they found some "irregularities" with the movement (this was as much info as I got) and asked for my permission to replace it. They said they needed my approval because it'd take 12 weeks for a new movement to arrive from Geneva. I said, "Yes, of course, please replace it!" I just got it back on 10/31 and am very happy. The day/date changes at 7 seconds after midnight, and the watch runs about 1 sec/day fast in the Crown-Up and Dial-Up positions (which are all the matter to me -- I wear it on my right hand).

There must've been something else wrong with my original movement, because other owners of the early 3255's said Rolex was able to fix the day/date issue with theirs quickly and easily, by adding one or more parts to those earliest movements. Perhaps the "irregularity" involved the slow timekeeping. I know from other forums that many 32XX movements start to run slow after several years because one of the parts wears down prematurely (regardless of lubrication). I have no idea if that's what Rolex actually found, though. A Rolex watchmaker in another forum said this (edited/paraphrased) about the 32XX movements: "The issue might be worse than lack of lubrication. The seconds pivot/long axle wears out prematurely at a spot where there shouldn't be any friction in the first place. This is most likely a CNC machining issue. There needs to be an update to the centre gear and pivot/long axle in order to prevent it."

Bottom line is that my new movement was probably upgraded from my old movement to contain the extra parts that Rolex added to fix the day/date issue. But that still doesn't explain what Rolex found that led them to replace my whole movement rather than just add those additional parts (which perhaps they added the first time I sent it to them -- I have no idea).