Hi chuck
Good article but you didn't cover some points like the ball bearing rotor mechanism, the jeweled pivot mechanism and the modular chrono question.
The ball bearing winding rotor system is always more fragile than the jeweled pivot system which offers an absolute resistance to violent sports like tennis or golf or even shooting with very big bore guns. I have heard problems with v7750 movements when playing golf or tennis and same for the eta 2824 and 2892-a2 movements. A guy who owned a chronomat from breitling and who used to play golf,has seen his watch stopping brutally,he went to the watchmaker, the watchmaker said him that the rotor went lose, unscrewed itself and fall in the movement. Another case like this happened to a friend of mine who wasplaying tennis with a superocean, after 6 months,the watch stopped, same problem than described above, the rotor went lose, unscrewed itself and has fallen in the movement.About modular chronos,a guy that I knew who owned a navitimer cal 11 and who used to play golf with a strong swing, has seen his watch stopping after some months and the same thing happened to one of my friends who was playing with his tag heuer monza powered by an eta 2894-a2.
I was said by many watchmakers that playing sports with a modular chrono was not recommended.
The only selfwinding movements than resist to very severe shocks are jeweled pivot self winding movements like the vintage inhouse omega cal 55x-56x-75x-100x-101x-102x and all the rolex calibres from the early 30's till this day.Rolex movements are far more robust than etas and they don't know the problems that eta movements know on the short term-medium term after very severe repeated shocks.
My points of agreements with you hcuk are about the handwound movements you quoted which are bullet proof,I will also agree about the lemania 1340-1341 and 5100 and not on the v7750 because of the many cases of fallen rotors.The 5100 being the only jeweled pivot self winding movement chrono as far as I can remember which explains its incredible robustness.
regards
georges
