tomhorn

Subdial spacing and the thickness of the case are the big tells, other than the pushers mentioned above. Valjoux 72 based builds are the closest looking to gen, but also the most expensive and difficult to source parts to put together. This is what one looks like ... Toro's is based on the ST-19 movement. The 6 o'clock subdial is too low on the dial and the hand is fixed (doesn't move). It also has the dreaded 110 spacing issue on the bezel. You can modify the movement to fit it to a gen spec dial, but it involves some work.

There are plenty of threads here regarding WSO. Both good and bad stories about dealing with him, I have always had good luck myself. His SS bezels have been used for 1675 builds successfully, but I don't recall anyone using a gold one. You'll have to do some searching on that one.

You definitely don't want that one. A 7750 with seconds at six is a known timebomb. Just read all the Daytona threads. There was at one time one relatively good version of the YM2, which was rare and not available from the traditional TDs. A member over on RepGeek could source them, but the supply may have dried up: http://www.repgeek.com/showthread.php?t=240978 Keep in mind, that even his didn't function properly. The movement is too complicated to get a fully working rep. On this one you needed to freeze the center seconds hand (it ran with the seconds at six) and the countdown timer couldn't be stopped (it ran to 0). The one good thing was they had the proper dial printing (no Date).

The 4th gen doesn't exist anymore new. You would have to find one in a M2M sale. It is the best base watch to build a franken from, if you are going down that path. Someone else will have to chime in, as I'm not sure of the difference between the V6F and Noob editions of the watch which are available now. The LMPO is the better of the new styles IMO, and you can build a good franken from it as well. I would buy it over the CR version.

Love that dial! I'm assuming gen? Somone else uses the old IBM keyboards too ...

Love that dial! Somone else uses the old IBM keyboard too ...

The bezel is fake (the 110 is a dead give away), and not only that, but it's not even seated properly. At least he mentioned the crystal had been replaced, it looks horrible too.

It's brother from another mother is looking forward to seeing it when it's done ...

Yes, it should work. JMB's case was designed for a 2824 and the sizes are the same. You can't use the date versions though (1530/1560/1570). Having said that, I rarely recommend using a gen Rolex caliber on a closed caseback watch when there is an ETA that will work, especially when you are not using a gen case. The cost/benefit ratio just doesn't cut it.

+1. He did my 5514, and I would highly recommend him.

Quite frankly, anyone looking to build a 1016 franken that doesn't use JMB's new enhanced case is crazy. http://www.rwgforum.net/topic/174928-fs-enhanced-explorer-1016-case-kit/ Other than going with a gen case of some sort, there really is no better choice. He's done a remarkable job on these, and you can upgrade with gen crystal and tube. It's the easiest way to do the project, IMO and the price is right. I wish they were available when I did my build.

Personally, I used a Whoopy dial in mine. It's great, but unless someone has one in their parts box, you can't find them anymore as Whoopy sold through all of them. Right now the most reasonably priced decent 1016 dial is Yuki's. I like the NDTrading dials a bit better, but according to others that have tried contacting them, they have been difficult to reach as of late. If you are OK with a SpaceDweller dial, the ingodd44 is great. I would stay away from the eBay dials. The lume on most of them looks like it was applied by a 3rd grader.

I asked several people while I was searching if the calendar parts could be removed on the 72c/730, but never got a definite answer from anyone (hence the disclaimer). Those donor watches always seemed to be cheaper, so I was hoping it would have worked.

Finally found my other cheat-sheet. Here is some more help for those of you searching for donor watches. Valjoux 72 Variations: Valjoux 72 Valjoux 72c - has added calendar complication (need to check to see if it can be removed) Valjoux 730 - has added calendar complication (need to check to see if it can be removed) Valjoux 722 Valjoux 726 Valjoux 727 Other brands caliber designations: Certina 29-052 Certina 29-0531 Certina 29-063 Longines 330 Wittnauer 13W-2 Brands I have seen a v72 in: Clebar Certina Certina DS-2 Heuer Camaro Heuer Autavia Jaeger LeCoultre Breitling Navitimer Wittnauer Girard-Perregaux Gallet Concord Wyler Incaflex 15024 1291 Croton 108-a 42063 (movement g4 tg f-418) Enicar 072/003 2305 Olma Wakmann Benrus Sky Chief (VZ-3 and AXZ on movm't) Schild

OK, I'll start with something that can be seen ...

High praise coming from you ... thanks! I didn't take it all the way to 1520 status yet. I think I will wait until I find a good feet first 5513 dial and do a pre-Comex build at that point. But first, I need to find a great looking 6263 big red panda dial and a ceter seconds hand to upgrade the new Daytona.

Switched back to the 5514 today ... and Wlecome Back Ubi!

Some more pics ...

I don't know. Seems pretty shady though if that's what they are doing ... I would set an impossibly high timeout number in the robots.txt file (hours or days), and see if anything changes. You can also disallow robots from parts of the server, so try disallowing the directory where the PERL script is (usually /cgi-bin/). I would also still block the domain and IP address block at the firewall too.

The YandoxBot/3.0 is their main indexing robot: http://help.yandex.com/search/robots/logs.xml#logs Appears you can set the timeout in the robots.txt file: http://help.yandex.com/search/robots/request-rate.xml It almost looks like they are using your machine to index others ...

Chances are the box has been compromised. You can try and figure it out from the /proc directory. Grab the PID of the running perl process, then check /proc/PID/cwd which will be a symlink to the current working directory of the script and check /proc/PID/cmdline which will contain the full command line of the running process (in both those cases replace PID with the pid of the process) To start, I would block the constant IP address in the firewall, since the random one drops when it's disconnected. I'd probably block the whole range to be safe. If it comes back using a new IP not attached to the Russian serach engine, then you will know that a hacker is working your box. I assume all your security patches and the IP Board software updates are current? Anything else running on the box? Was the Shellshock patch done? Also if you have the PERL library libwww-perl installed, check the logs. It's a common library used by hackers. You can grep the access log to see if you find anything there. Good luck!

I spent a bunch of time talking about the concept of "Happy Accidents" coming into play with my vintage builds when I posted my 5514 thread. Amazingly enough, it's happened again. My wallet is crying "uncle" and I think I am going to have to be done for awhile. OK, who am I kidding? As I mentioned in the 5514 thread, I was already looking at the next project I planned to tackle, a Daytona 6265. I had actually purchased most of what I needed for the build. I found one of the early DW v72 cases, along with an early DW dial, DW handset, and DW bezel from eunomians. Picked up a Gen Vintage 703 crown and tube from Omega for a different project but decided to use it here. A Gen T-21 crystal came from djpropel on eBay, and a gen 7835 bracelet from dropbear2007. One strange thing cropped up. After getting the DW case, I noticed that it had two different pushers! Oops ... So, I picked up a pair of the Ofrei pushers to fix that problem. Everything was coming together nicely ... all except finding a Valjoux 72 that wasn't going to break the bank. Can't tell you how many I got outbid on over the last several months. Agonizing to be sure, as I was stuck here: Before I get any further into the story, I thought I would offer up some help to people looking for Valjoux 72's. Here is a list of all of the donor watch brands I found along the way where you can find them: Aristo, Baylor, Benrus, Bovet, Bucherer, Casper, Certina, Clebar, Enicar, Eterna, Fortis, Gallet, Jardur, Kelbert, LeJour, Minerva, Nicollet, Wakmann, Wittnauer, Wyler, and Zodiac. I'm sure there are others. Searching by brand is the way to go if you are trying to find something under the radar on eBay that you can hopefully score for a good price. Not only was the Valjoux 72 getting to be a difficult hunt, but so was finding a watchsmith to service one now that The Zigmeister has retired. I had a couple of leads, but without the movement in hand, it didn't really matter yet. And then the Happy Accident. Again while minding my own business, along comes a deal too good to pass up. Danielv2000 posted this gem up for sale. http://www.rwgforum.net/topic/174953-sold-zigmeister-built-v72-daytona-6263-a-vintage-classic/ So, the build for sale basically contained everything I had already accumulated (except the panda dial, which I preferred anyway), plus the added bonus of a v72 serviced by none other than the Zigmeister himself. And as fate would have it, the gen T-21 I had actually sold to Danielv2000 to begin with ... Imagine that, a part coming full circle. The watch gods had spoken ... I had to buy it. Dealing with Danielv2000 was a pleasure. Payment was sent, and I now had a finished project in one easy step. Danielv2000 was kind enough to bring it to the States on a trip to eliminate potential customs problems. It was handed off to the USPS, and then the wait began. And continued ... and continued ... and continued ... and ... well you get the point. Seems like the Daytona wanted to see a some of the country first, so she traveled to both coasts. Am guessing she felt the need to dip her toes in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans or some such nonsense. Must admit I'm a bit surprised she didn't also stop in to see Nanuq and go for a dogsled ride, but at last she finally made it to me. Once unpacked, I was excited to find her in one piece. I already had a gen 7835, so it was time to get it installed. Well, it would have been time, except that the 19mm springbars that I thought I had were now missing ... So, a quick purchase from Phong, and finally I was able to get the bracelet installed. The endlinks are 357's, which don't fit great, but at least I can wear her now! Normally I wouldn't have purchased a finished build. I enjoy the parts hunt too much, and also being able to spread the cost of the purchase over time. This was a special case, because the price of the finished product was not going to be much higher than if I had finished it off using the parts I already had. In fact, depending on the final cost of the v72, getting it serviced and then assembled, it likely would have cost me more to do it myself in the long run, and I wouldn't have had the finished product for awhile. I love a win-win situation. Since I would still like to put my own stamp on things, so she's definitely not done yet. The center seconds hand needs to get fixed, and I will look for a better dial as I'm sure the blemish will get to me after awhile. I also prefer the look of the 6265's bezel, so I wouldn't be surprised if I end up swapping it, and my existing DW case does have a 6263 caseback, so I will probably swap that out too at some point. For now, I'm just going to admire her for a bit. Again, thanks to all the people who helped along the way ... eunomians, Omega, djpropel, dropbear2007, and whoopy12 with the parts I collected. Lhooq, The Zigmeister, and Ubiquitous with question answering. It's a great community! And most importantly, thanks to Danielv2000 for buying my T-21 a long time ago, and then selling it back to me at cost ... along with some additional parts ... So, the final build (as of today) looks like this: DW Case NY Watch Bezel DW Dial (relumed by Zigmeister) Unknown Hands (I assume DW) Gen 703 Crown Gen 703 Tube Gen T-21 Enicar V72 (serviced by Zigmeister) Gen 7835 w/357 endlinks Phong Springbars More pictures to come ...

Well, first of all you can't assume the numbers are consecutive, and even if they are, you don't know how far back they go. Could be a day, month or year. Could be since they started with the current software. Many sytems that have transaction ID's actually use check-digits for this very reason (so people can't figure out order numbers). Either at the front or back. If the TD you are talking about is using them, you could instead be looking at 5051 or 0515 orders. I have no doubt the rep watch market is probably in the billions of USD per year, but I doubt there is any way you could extrapolate that total from one order number at one TD ...

Nice work! Welcome to the club!