Both of these faults are common, but I am not yet willing to say that they are "normal" and should be accepted. It really depends on the extent of the errors.
The minute recorder flip is controlled by a finger on the chronograph seconds recording wheel. I normally find that these flip right as the central chrono seconds hand passes the 12, like this:
Note that this is an 861, but the 1861 is exactly the same construction as the 861 with regards to the minute recorder flip. The 321 is a different animal, and that one can be precisely adjusted.
I recently had an 1861 in the shop that the minute counter would flip a full second after the seconds chrono hand had passed over the 12 marker. I had some of my own ideas about resolving this, but since Omega's technical guides were silent on any solutions, I decided to email the technical guy and ask some questions. One was is there a tolerance to be applied, because Omega's technical guide just says the minute counter should flip as the hand passes over the 12 mark. I never did get an answer to that question.
My other question was, what adjustment is there for this - the answer to that is officially none. I asked how they handled this situation, and he said that the minute and seconds counter wheel are changed, and they see if that improves things. Not much of a strategy. Since I seem to be reading a lot about this specific problem, over the last year maybe, and I am now seeing modern 1861's come in on occasion with the minute counter not flipping spot on, my guess is that something in the manufacturing tolerances has changed slightly sometime in the recent past.
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