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When setting your date on a an asian 2836-2 I suggest you do it this way. I have noticed a problem with the date corrector on the asian movement, since I have replaced several over the last couple of months. Ive noticed Asian movements have a very weak date corrector gear, that is why so many have problems with the date breaking and not changing. One simple practice should help keep your date wheel from breaking. Photo 1 shows the correct position for the date corrector when you are setting your date. Photo 2 shows the date corrector position right after the date has flipped over. If you try to roll the date forward in that position, the calandar wheel puts undue pressure on an already weak part of the date change assy. Simply roll your time forward closer to noon before you change the date, that will help to keep your date changing for a long time to come. Not a bad pratice for the swiss either. Just sharing some info with forum. You will notice less resitance when the time is close to noon, you can fell the tension when you try to set it close to midnight.

The latest version of the long running GMT movement is quite well made...finally...after all these years. At least the GMT parts seem to be well made, unfortunately this particular A2836-2 has been ruined by unskilled hands. The watch was sent in for servicing, the initial teardown showed that despite being wound, the movement was not running, first sign of a problem. During the teardown, a few clues were noted, all the screws were damaged, as you can see here, the last person to work on this one wasn't even capable of selecting the correct sized screwdriver...no wonder there is so much damage... Once the movement was fully torn down, a quick overall inspection revealed a show stopper, check out the damage where the pivot hole is located in the mainplate for the calendar autochange gear. I have never seen this type of damage. As you can see in this picture, the hole is somewhat larger than the pivot, it's no wonder the movement would not run, the gear would move sideways and jam up the works. I am baffled as to how this could happen, it looks as if someone beat it with a punch and hammer, why they did this is beyond me. Here is an overall view of the movement, note in this view the "FAKE" bottom balance c0ck side piece is removed, it's completely disfunctional and serves no purpose. Here is the movement with the GMT parts removed. That damage to the mainplate renders it scrap, you need a complete new mainplate, and since this movement is an Asian Clone, it's beyond repair. I offered the owner a couple of options (instead of re-assembling the movement and watch and shipping to China...) one option was that I supply a ETA 2836-2, completely serviced, and switch over the GMT parts from the Asian copy onto the ETA. The owner agreed that this was a good solution, and in reality, a cheaper solution than shipping the watch back to China. Parts were swapped over from the clone to the ETA. Here's the clone and ETA before putting the clone back together. Movement is running and being tested. Along with the swap of the parts, the GMT gear and it's detent were lubricated, as were the other GMT gears, the GMT hand now snaps perfectly to it's new position when adjusting it. Total turn time, from when the customer contacted me, to today, less than 2 weeks. How's that for customer service. That is the advantage of being organized and putting your customers first, and not ignoring them for months on end after they send you a watch for a simple job, or better yet, a relume. Barring any running problems, the watch will be in the mail by the end of the week, and back on the customer's wrist. This is the first of the Asian clone 2836-2's that I have seen with this problem. Normally they are well made and respond well to servicing. Not sure what happend here, I suspect that the watch may have been a customer return (after he or his modder damaged the movement) and that the watch was re-sold. Typically the factory uses the correct screwdrivers, at least the automated movement assembly machines do, and the mainplate pivot hole damage is totally bizzare...knowing that, the only possibility is that it was damaged by unskilled hands. Thanks for reading.