Bike Mike

Yeah, I don't know how they screwed that one up. Seems pretty simple one to get right to me. Same with the "B" next to the 12 rider tabe and not on the side of the bezel.

Removal of any tooling marks from the end mills. Files, tooling stones, etc. to get rid of the heavy marks in prep for brushing or polishing.

Lani, Mine is for sale on the board, comes with UTC. Runs good. My pearl looks the same! I was PO'd about this as well!

Measure the crown Dia. DD, DJ have a 6mm crown. Triple lock like on Subs & Daytonas have 7mm. I don't know about the vintage pieces. If you buy the Gen crown and tubes you never have to worry about mixing and matching some thing together again. To me that is worth the cost of the Gen. parts alone. I know I can always go get a Gen crown and replace it in minutes and not worry about it fitting or not.

What is so hard about machining that? If the side walls are angled, then it would need to be cut with a ball-nose mill. This will leave a radius on the floor, but that can be picked out with a smaller end mill during the final pass. My concern would be tolerance. Do they guarantee the tolerance will be held and do I get to assign those tolerances? There is just too much variances that I would want to be in control of. CAD software tolerance, machine setup, cutter selection and CAM programming. Crown guard would be pretty easy to machine requiring 4 setups and a fixture. However, I am sure they are not going to bench the part out for you. Let us know what they say.

Best stuff I have found for leather straps as well (Have tried lots of leather conditioners). Can be picked up for a few dollars at most AD's.

I would imagine too, that the ETA would be oiled and not needing a service (right away) as it come directly from ETA. Just some thing else to think about when deciding. Never a fan of the brown straps, but that looks great on the silver Lani!

Not even the gens us natural rubber anymore as it would eventually crack. All the straps are made from a silicone base (Gen & rep). It is to what "degree" other materials are compounded into the mixture. For instance I have a gen & rep Breitling pro diver strap. The gen his more stiff and resists dust. The rep, while still excellent, is more flexible and has a tendency to accumulate dust. To me this is indicating more silicone then the gen strap. A few months ago there was a really good article in one of the watch magazines that talked about the use of rubber in Swiss time pieces. Hublot was the first to use natural rubber straps on their watches. Throughout the years more and more manufactures have adopted rubber as the technology has evolved from natural rubber to silicone based. With regards to leather straps, I bought one from Andrew for my SOSF, and it was phenomenal. It felt like, smelled like and acted like leather. Compared to a Gen on a scale from 1-10, 10 being a gen strap, the rep was a 8.5!

This exact same thing (Crown knurling stripped) happened to my friends DJ recently. I just fixed it for him a week ago. Get your self a pin vise (Bergeon #1841), this would have saved you trouble with removing the stem from the crown. It will also help you install the stem securely to the new crown without risk of damaging the crown. I bought a Gen 6mm crown and tube from Ebay for $50. I had to drill & re-tap the case for the gen crown tube using a Rolex tap. Crown fitted perfectly to the stem. Secure using diamond powder or loctite if not available. I am now kicking my a$$ knowing the entire time I was doing this that I should have taken pictures and made a tutorial for this forum.

Huh? There is a watch in that pic?

Thanks, it is blue.

I was the same when I got mine. The big thing that I notice was that the rep did not have that starburst light effect through the dial that you get from the gen. Seeing your pics, I want a silver face now too!

What is wrong with having a drawing board? I still use mine as my compasses keep scratching my computer screen!

I don’t know your skill, but I can speak for myself, being a metal model maker for 8+ years. You would never be able to cut the case contour on a vertical mill as there is too much complex shape to it requiring your to drive multiple axis’s at once. To even get the rough shape would require a rotary table, vertical offset rotary fixture, internal/external groove cutter with boring bar attachment. A couple of sine bars or plates would be needed as well along with a ton of manual trig work for setup. For a lathe, you would need one capable of cutting threads (case threads) and has a powered cross slide. Throw the drill press out, you have a mill so all you would need is a wiggler to dial in your hole locations. Watch cases are forged, then CNC machines out. For CNC you would require a CAD model (easy enough to get, white light scan a gen, create a point cloud and surface), CAM paths and post processing. I nice high speed CNC with 45K rpm head speed and 30-35K mm/min feed rate would reduce cutter marks however, you still would require a lot of hand benching. A plunge cut EDM would work wonders too! Wonder if any Gen manufactures use them.

Only one I have.

If you have access to a local watchmaker, they should be able to get the bezel off without damaging the case if they have the correct bezel removing tool, like the Horotec.

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!!!

I have seen it and it does look great. That is where I got the idea that Breitling should have done it. They took a beautiful piece and kind of cheapened it up with thier Pro-Diver strap. At least give the customer the option. Regardless, yours is just perfect!

Got my wife the black ceramic Chanel J12 with diamong midlink bracelt & diamond bezel. I think my jaw hit the floor harder then hers when it arrived.

You sound about as anal as me when it comes to minor little details at times. Breilting needed to put this piece on matching bracelet.

Here is Link discussing watches realtive to wrist size. My $0.02, if you do not have at least a 8" wrist, the SA is too big for you. Not only is the SA a little bigger in diameter then a PO, but it is also much thicker making it look even bigger. You can make any watch look big (if that is what you are going for) if sized to your wrist right. The Skyland might be a better choice.

I have wondered even how those have gotten out. Breitling is very strict with gets out. Even getting them to return replaced parts to a customer who bought a piece from them, takes begging and pleading.

Not worth doing the ETA7750. Just have the A7750 serviced. The bezel is not going to fit. You have to rememeber the Reps only look like that Gens, they are not constructed in the same manner or held to such tight tolerances, so the interchangeability of parts most of the time is not possible. On some of the new super reps part swap is possible.

As The Zigmeister said, this is not paint. On the Gens, it is actually a heat treat process, that tempers the screw. During the process, the screw changes color, once the blue color is achieved, the correct degree of tempering has been established, giving the screw the desired properties. Of course, on Reps this may just be simulated with some metal die like gun blueing that is baked on.

Sorry man. I just got off the phone with the AD and it is a 22mm Ti Pro 2 that they have.