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Hi all, just thought I'd share with you, the progress of my old faithful Navitimer rep. It is around 5 yrs old now, and has just reached a point in its life that it finally deserves! It started off as a v1, bought from an internet dealer in GZ. It had a dull black baton dial. Nice slide rule, but the crystal was completely devoid of AR. Yuk. This served me well for a while but the unreliable 21k a7750 stopped working. It was left to sit in a dark watchbox for a number of months while I contemplated its future. A number of months later in 2007, our trusty source of franken material (fleabay) came up a not too shabby gen dial. Blue with arabics, calibre 23. This was duly bought, trimmed (essential for this example) and fitted. Amazingly, I got the mov't working again by performing a rudimentary 'amateur service'. Shown here with a rep croco strap... As time would have it, the dirty old low beat gave up again, and I finally sent it off to Domi for servicing in early 2011. While this was happening, I sent the to crystal to Takashi for AR treatment. Needless to say, both items came back perfect and exactly as I wanted. Unfortunately, the clear crystal now revealed the sunken date even more (if that's possible), and also the slightly outboard date window on the gen dial!! This was bugging me more than the non-AR so I knew I had to do something. A raised date wheel was not the answer. It had to be a 7753... Today that moment came about... I've ordered the correct ETA datewheel, so there will be better alignment, aswell as orientation (no, not a Breitling datewheel unfortunately) By the way, the black gen dial (top right) is NOT for sale! Cobbled together with a gen calf deployant, a broken Nikon D50, and some ad-hoc lighting......I hope you enjoy the pics EDIT: A few daylight shots

I hope this isn't a repost, and if so, I apologize. I found this quite interesting on several levels.. Part 1 http://www.youtube.c...e&v=namj9CES-TE Part 2 http://www.youtube.c...e&v=ZNcf5o9N3WA WR

You won't be happy until you'll get an answer you want to hear so I'll just say it to save some time: Your reps are awesome, nobody can tell they're not real, you are totally fooling everyone, even some 50 year old dude who works in the mall watch dealer and knows more about watches than all of us combined. Congratulations, you have arrived.

2009 E350 Sport. I have always loved the body style of this generation E-Class. My favorite car of all time is the E55, but it's just too impractical for a daily driver getting only 10 mpg So the E350 will have to do The day we brought the car home

Now that would be a revelation! Who did you hear that from? I wonder how many versions it'll take to get right.....

Thanks for this very interessing report. It's always fascinating to see how it is built. It's also interesting to see the process in a luxury brand, with many automated operations, and to compare it with a more "manual" process. I've been in China, and had the opportunity to visit watch case factories. I'm sure you'll have fun comparing my pictures with the film shown above. Do you remember in the film the first step with the case ? That's what they call "case blank". Here are the operations that follows, and which were made by a robot in the film : And the final polishing : Maybe you'll think that in such a factory they are just doing rubish. If you think so, you're wrong ! These guys are not working in a high tech workshop, but they are great professionals. And you'd be suprised by the quality of finishing they are able to provide. Specially with polishing, which is the last operation and the most difficult one. I takes years to train a very good polisher. And if he makes a mistake, the case cannot be fixed and goes to the dustbin (which means that all previous operations - and the associated production cost - are lost). Case of your favourite rep comes probably from a factory which looks like this one. Hope you'll find it interesting. Paul

Actually the V2 case isn't any more accurate than V1. Especially the lugs which are the biggest tell. The gens lugs are a little chunkier leaning more to PreV style especially when viewed from the side. Upon seeing the current 360 reps on the wrist, the only tell that really stands out is the dial. And unless the person doing the relume has a gen to go by and match (can't do it from pics alone) you'd be wasting your money. Slap a ST-36 movement in a V1 and you're good to go. Can't go by DLC color either based on pics alone. The V1 matches nicely to gen. And here are 2 pics of the same gen 360 taken at the same time, only difference is one was taken in some shade the other a little more sunlight. Looks like 2 totally different coatings, which is why final judgment can't be made solely by pics alone.

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."