Did Rolex Buy Kif?

[jholbrook]

I've been hearing the last year or so that Rolex now has their own in-house manufactured shock protection and no longer uses Kif. I believe the Rolex system is called Paraflex.

There is some speculation that Rolex actually bought Kif - can anyone confirm or deny?

[akroll]

Hi John,

I saw an interesting thing the other day on my 2006 Prince with the glass back: it also has Paraflex already. So it seems that the new shock protection actually exists for some longer time. Afaik, supposedly it is something completely new. At least it definitely looks different.

[NicoH]

I thought that Rolex still uses Kif on their older calibers and that the Paraflex is only found in the cal. 3135 of the Deepsea SD and the 3155 (3156?) in the Day-Date II. And - as Axel said - in the Prince.

I thought the GMT, Submariners, ... still used the Kif shock protection. Which would make me believe that they did not buy Kif.

[akroll]

Afaik Milgauss has it too.

Now that I think of it, I read about that in the Dowling book. Matter of fact, I skimmed through the section on fakes yesterday, and he pointed out that some fake had an Incabloc, which is not possible as Rolex owns a stake in Kif.

[jholbrook]

Originally posted by NicoH
I thought that Rolex still uses Kif on their older calibers and that the Paraflex is only found in the cal. 3135 of the Deepsea SD and the 3155 (3156?) in the Day-Date II. And - as Axel said - in the Prince.

I thought the GMT, Submariners, ... still used the Kif shock protection. Which would make me believe that they did not buy Kif.

Possibly - but Rolex could simply have deep supply bins full of Kif shock protection parts they need to use up.

[akroll]

Or the new protection is more expensive to produce, which woudl be normal in the first years of a product cycle. So the low cost models do not get it

I also believe that all new models have Paraflex, so it may simply be a matter of reconstruction.