ETA Caliber 2834-2

The ETA caliber 2834-2 is a Swiss made automatic movement with a day-date complication. The calendar display on this movement is similar to the Rolex President Day-Date, with a full day of the week indicator at 12:00 and a date at 3:00 (also possible at 6:00 depending on the dial design).

The 2834-2 is part of ETA’s Mecaline collection. Official documentation was found dated as far back as 2009, with updates as recently as 2018.

2834-2 VS 2836-2:

There is also a similar caliber 2836-2. The main difference here is that the 2836-2 features an inner day of the week calendar wheel, placing the day indicator left of the date at 3:00 on the dial (with abbreviated spelling). The 2834-2 being discussed here has an outer day wheel, placing a panoramic style day of the week indicator at 12:00 (with the full spelling).

Because of the different calendar display, the 2834-2 has a larger overall diameter of 29mm (13”’), compared to the regular 28XX size of 25.6mm (11.5”’). For this reason, the 2834-2 and 2836-2 are not interchangeable and cannot be directly swapped.

Setting the 2834-2:

• Position 0 – Crown in hand-winding position (running position). This can be against the watch case in watches without a screw-down crown, or in unscrewed position on watches with a screw-down crown.
• Position 1 (one click) – Quickset adjustment of the day and date. Turning the crown clockwise will advance the date. Turning the crown counterclockwise will advance the day of the week.
• Position 2 (two clicks) – Time setting position with hacking seconds.

Note: To avoid damaging the movement, do not attempt to set the date when the hands are between the hours of 9pm and 3am.

Power Reserve:

According to ETA, it takes a minimum of 27 winds of the crown to fully wind the movement. The watch community seems to agree on 30-40 turns being sufficient to reach full power reserve. In contrast, when depending primarily on the rotor (oscillating weight) to wind the movement, it can take up to 1,250 turns or 1 hour and 30 minutes of the movement in motion.

Although the power reserve of the 2824-2 based movements, including this 2824-2, is widely known to be around 38 hours (for example, as listed in ETA tech sheets dated 2018), the official ETA website claims this caliber has a “typical power reserve” of 42 hours (as of 2021). Please comment below as to the power reserve you have experienced with your 2834-2 powered timepieces.

Drawings Front and Back:

Replacement Prices:

As with most ETA movements, although the 2834-2 is unavailable from ETA, replacement movements and parts can still be found online.

Examples of watches with this movement:

Below is an example of an ETA 2834-2 found in this Tudor Prince day/date watch. Notice that instead of Incabloc or Novodiac for the anti-shock device, Tudor (Rolex) used a Kif shock absorber (as they did with all of their other movements at the time as well, before switching everything over to paraflex).

Additional Resources:

• Official ETA 2834-2 tech docs/oil charts (pdf)
• ETA Grades and the differences
• More ETA watch movements