‘Ninja01’, a redoubtable member of the Seikoholics forum kindly contacted me about the Diamond Flake movement and the difference between the donor movement I’ve used to resolve the problem with my Diamond Flake. Ninja01 is a Seiko expert and told me that the Gold Feather model had at least two movement variants with differences in their architecture, so could this apply to the Diamond Flake?

Since I was concerned that my donor movement, although running well, might have been fixed in a non-original way I thought I’d dig a little deeper. I hoped that this would also confirm Marko’s view and reassurance that all is well!

First I checked my photo of the two movements and noticed that not only did the donor movement have a different top lever, but it was also missing a part held by a screw underneath it. So it is more than the top lever that is different. I soon found, via Ranfft’s archive, that there were several movement numbers for the Diamond Flake, from 0700 to 0705, but no differences are identified.

I then studied my original parts manual – here is the relevant area. Part 077 is the top lever and part 903-02 is the lower part, not present in the donor movement – note also alternative parts 067-12 and 068-09 :

In the parts list I see that the 0700 has part 903-02, whilst it is not required for the 0701 & 0702 movements. The full 077 part number for the 0700 is 077-11, whilst for the 0701 & 0702 it is 077-12, confirming that it is different, although not illustrated in the diagram. Also, part 067-12 is required for the 0700, whilst for the 0701 & 0702 it is 068-09 :

So there we have it – the 0701 and 0702, presumably later versions, use two different parts, and do not require the lower part. Clearly my donor movement is one of these (I didn’t see a movement number stamped on it) and all seems correct, as Marko advised 🙂

NB: the parts diagram shows a date wheel, this is for the 2700 Diamond Flake Date and the 2710 Date Flake models.