2017 / 2018 TAG Heuer Monaco '50th Anniversary of Gulf Racing' - Special Edition (CAW211R)

I know 😁 lets hope his boss doesn't find out about him doing these videos

Hi all, I purchased a CAW211R over the holiday and had a chance to get some macro shots of it.

I got the microscope out to look at the oil reservoir on a vintage Rolex Lady Datejust 26 I just bought my wife; the watch was made in 1988 and I have no idea of it's service history so I wanted to get a look before I decided what attention it needed.

The setup is a Nikon SM-1 stereo microscope with huge 23mm 10x oculars and a 0.8 to 4x base for a maximum magnification of 40x. Illumination is a 40-LED ring light with brightness control (essential). I had been using a handheld iPhone placed over one ocular to take macros but someone on WUS suggested a cheap frame for the purpose. I discovered it works best through the magnification lens on the iPhone 13 Pro (use 3x setting) and placed as far away from the ocular as the frame allows.

So here's the watch:

First the movement. It has a display caseback so no warranties were harmed in the making of these photos. The rotor bearing (and the base-movement center seconds hand upper bushing):

At close zoom, I could see the seconds hand pinion turning; note that this gear always turns and it's the one that drives ALL movement in the chrono module (well, except the date ring).

The rotor logo:

What I was really interest in:

I'm looking for the outline of the oil reservoir as I mentioned above. While it's easier to see with stereo, inside the boundary appears wet and outside appears dry. It's actually the meniscus between the bushing that's domed on the upper side and the flat-bottomed cap stone. The space widens as it moves away from center, and a proper amount of oil will fill it to about 2/3 the diameter of the jewel. If you follow it around, it's the only line that's not exactly round. So things look good on this bushing.

Wifey Watchdog's Datejust was about half the total diameter, indicting a service within the last few years (or perhaps a light touch when serviced) so no problem wearing it (but I did just purchase an authentic mainspring for the eventual service on my part).

On to more movement macros, here's the balance wheel (not hacked tho):

... a bit overexposed.

The view did reveal a little issue:

There's a nasty burr where the regulator cut into the brass boss on the cock surrounding the shock protector. It's right in the center of the pic and really obvious in stereo. There's also a bit of contamination at this level. In the shot I annotated, there's a couple nougies on the cap jewel. Nothing you can see with the naked eye but at 40x, pretty obvious.

On to the dial:

The "Gulf" logo. The dial to the left of the light blue band has a sunburst finish, made by abrading the base material in a pattern that starts at the center and goes outward. The dark blue finish (the color of raw crude, I'm told by the promo insert) is thin enough to see the sunburst through, likely lacquer with a tint. The light blue is pad printed and it looks as though a pattern is pad printed either underneath it or on top in the same paint.

A closer shot of the logo:

Wow. What is that stuff? I doubt it's contamination under the paint as the blue stripe doesn't have it and I don't see anything on the dark blue. I suspect it's pad printed or in the base white that was the first color to be printed, perhaps to give it a semi-flat look. Again, the dial looks great to the naked eye, so I doubt TAG wanted or expected anyone to take these shots.

Finally, the running-seconds register. BTW, the movement is called Cal 11 but it's hardly anything like the true Heuer model, being a Sellita Top Grade SW300-1 turned upside down on a bespoke DD chrono module. The original Cal 11 didn't have running seconds and that would have been a deal-breaker for me personally:

Again we see the printed pattern on the light blue band but not on the orange. And the sunburst dial peeks out from beneath the bands. I think the register is nicely executed and the artifact on the hand is the ring-light on the microscope.

Just to sooth your eyes after all this:


Edit: I expect the mods to file this post at the end of some infinitely long thread that already exists and I'm fine with that, but I though you should see it up front and get a look before they do.

Great pics, thanks for sharing! 👍

@ExpiredWatchdog

Yuck... entry level Swiss watches should not be put under makro. Lets leave that to the high end stuff where they pay attention to the tiny details. These images will haunt my soul. But thanks for sharing! I guess... 😁

Better go and look as some macros of Grand Seikos, quick! 😉

Ah yes, for sure with the Japanese it is a completely different story. A 5-10k GS looks killer under makro in comparison, you probably need to spend ten times as much to get perfection like that from the Swiss

All is relative of course but in the Swiss market my feeling is that entry level is most stuff below 10k. This is the segment where you pay for design and brand, not craftmanship and attention to detail.

And while we obsess over products from the greedy Swiss, the Germans be all like "hey you can have perfection for less than 10k. And yeah, about 95& of the parts are made in our facilities by us or the companies we own"

I was surprised to see how bumpy the logo looks super close up. So I took a magnifying loupe to my CAW2113 Calibre12 Monaco Gulf Grey LE (circa 2010) to check the logo. It looked rather smooth under the loupe, I couldn't see bumps like in your macro shot.

The only camera I have capable of a macro shot is a 9 year old Nikon and this is as close as my camera can get, which isn't close enough.


So you'll just have to trust my eyes when I say it's not bumpy like yours under a loupe.

Also, @heuerholic had posted a few macros of his CAW211T Monaco Gulf "First Victory" 1 of 50 LE. His pics don't get as close as yours, but I'm wondering if he were to zoom in closer on the logo what it would look like.