alligoat

Beautiful job avitt! Your end pieces look better than the ones on Interwatches DRSD! Nice bezel insert, datewheel, crown and tube and those pointed cg's are absolutely awesome. Fantastic.

Yep, polexpete got that one. The 16660 came out in 1978 with a sapphire crystal and the increased rating of 1220m=4000ft and an enlarged gas escape valve. Same style hours markers as the 1665, 1680 and the early 16800. I also like your bezel insert, cg's and crown. I guess that's a MBW case. Looks good.

Actually, I used "rolex date" and then just wade thru all of the Date watches, etc! This guy is down in Sugar Land which is a suburb of H-town. He's not the greatest, but I also noticed he has ETA Rolex hands. I've bought other rolex type aftermarket stuff from Clark Watch Supply- nostalgia2000, with good results- but as I recall, ubi didn't like his sub hands. I don't know if this guy's hands are any good, but you can see he has a lot of aftermarket stuff. BTW, I'm not planning on making a purchase from Paul at this time, because I bought his Perfect Sub last month, I just haven't gotten around to dealing with my TW Best case, which entails drilling the lugs holes more on center than they already are, in other words, I have one of the cases w/ the off-center holes!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...p;rd=1&rd=1 Here's another one, is it any better? Price is better, as I recall

Here you go Chief, a datewheel from ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/DATE-DISC-FOR-ROLEX-31...3QQcmdZViewItem This guy might have others, and I've heard that Luenfat over in Hong Kong has wheels with the closed sixes and nines, you just have to request them.

Interesting. It's not the same as the noob or the beginmariner. The case has a deeper rehaut, date window is well placed and the movement looks like crap. But it might be a good starting point for building a kick-ass sub. The case marking 16610T is different from the F520117 marking on the noob/begin/Paul/TWG/EL version. If it had an eta, it would be that much better.

Which movement did you get, asian or eta?

Interesting Neil, I'd love to hear where you can pick up a NOS for $1700. I did see an Omega similar to yours yesterday on the bay from jmryshi for like $1395, buy it now. The idea of buying this rep and sending it to Ziggy for service isn't a bad one. As I recall, he charges $325 to service a 7750 and it might be a little more for this one due to the added complications. What would be really interesting is if Zig were to do a pictorial and show us how the chinese transformed it from a 7750 into a 7751.

Andrew's Perfect Sub should be fine. Hopefully, with the movement serviced and the case waterproofed, it will be a good purchase for you. With the ETA movement, you've got a better motor than the asian 21j, and servicing should get you about 3-5 years of good trouble-free wear. The waterproofing is nice and now you should be good for "light" duty in water, swimming, but no diving say. No one really knows what the extra seals added means, because the asian 21j and the $188 sub come with o-rings and with a little tune-up, can be made as waterproof as the Perfect sub. As with any of these watches, the design is theoretically WR, but by virtue of the lack of QC, they may not be WR in practice. But lots of people around here make their watches WR and then pressure test them to make sure they are. Shortcomings on this watch (which I call the CN 2006, and is sold by at least 5 of the dealers) are slightly shallow rehaut, too big a crown and a so-so bezel pearl. But all in all, lots of people are happy w/ this watch and get good service from it. And it's over $4K cheaper than a new gen!

My wife got great mileage out of this watch from Paul http://www.wo-mart.com/product_info.php?cP...products_id=203 She liked it so much, she went out and bought a gen on ebay, but as is the case when you buy a used Rolex, you have to factor the price of servicing into your purchase. Heck, she spent more servicing the gen than the rep costs. The two tone rep holds up well, the clasp is ss, and your only wear point is the crown. And of course, women aren't as rough on a watch as men.

Plan B would be to buy the Datora from Josh and a Valjoux 7751 from ofrei- $429 + s&h and send them on to Ziggy. The only issue might be the hand sizes, but for under $1K you'd have a damn fine watch. I wonder if it would work?

How about it hemicuda?

Yep, I got a reply from Josh, Asian 7750. What a disappointment!

I think your TW case looks OK. What I like about it are the good position of the cyclops/ date window, properly positioned- not too far to the right edge of the watch, the lug holes are centered (some of the TW cases have off-center lugs holes) and it has deep rehaut. It's a good platform for modding. And if you want to (re)lume your 1680, by all means go for it. On a historically correct collector's edition genuine 1680, it might be a faux pas to relume, but yours is a rep and that means you can do whatever you damn well please. PS, Oli did a nice job of "pointing up" those crown guards.

My guess would be that it wouldn't fit, but I don't know for sure. My experience has been that rep sizes are just slightly larger for the most part than gen. I've tried fitting a gen dial in a rep case- gen dial too small, rep crystal is slightly larger than gen (295C), and so on. Another option would be building a Franken DJ, I've built two, an ss w/ the wg fluted bezel and a tt w/ the gold bezel and silver dial. Then you know the diamond bezel will fit. It has cost me around $500 each to put my DJ's together. But I certainly consider a Franken a step above a plain rep. Plan B would be buy a cheap gen bezel like the engine turned bezel and see if it fits. If it doesn't, you're not out the expense of the diamonds.

Very interesting. This appears to be a Datora with the automatic Valjoux 7751 movement and this is the first time I've ever seen it in a rep watch. I can't tell you whether it's Swiss or if the Chinese have finally copied it. Price will tell you which movement it has. $750 and up is Swiss, $300-500 is asian. If it's asian, I'd definitely stay away until they work out the bugs, but if I had to guess, I'd figure it is Swiss. The 7751 is a complicated movement with triple date (day, date and month), 24 hour hand and running seconds at nine, thirty minute counter at twelve and 12 hour counter at 6. The button on the case at 10 o'clock advances the day and you advance the date and the month with the crown in the second position- turning it one way advances the date and the other advances the month. The chronos function the same as the 7750. The 7751 is a descendent of the Valjoux 72C, just like the 7750 is a descendent of the V72B. I think I'll email Josh and see if it's a Swiss movement and what the real price is- you notice he hasn't even posted a description yet, that's how new it is!

Well wight, you make some good points. On my '78 gen, the crown sits higher on the case when you look at it from the side, cg's droop, the bezel is much smoother and the indentations are less pronounced. Lugs are thinner. The inside of the case looks pretty much like hemicudas, with the notch out of the ring on the side next to the balance- opposite the stem. I don't have time to open my WM since it's a bear to open and I have to go to work!

That engraving is nice- none of that computer generated laser etching you see on rep cases. And there's no doubt about the movement and the datewheel. A side shot of the crown guards from say 5 o'clock would be nice, because the one thing about my gen 1680 is the the cg's hang down on the bottom- I guess because the stem/crown sits so low in the case. Crown and tube are the later 24-7030 replacement. I still think the cg's are too fat and like EPZ, I don't particularly like the lugs, but there were three versions of the Submariner crown guards from the 60's into the 70's. Skeet and Urul shows a 5512 "with the third style of crown guards which had a rounded profile" which dates from the mid 60's (pg. 38). Could this be a early gen from the 1966-67 era?

If you go to Redwatches, you'll see a dial with the gap. And those open sixes are of course early http://www.redwatches.com/page33.html Like the DRSD, there were various versions of the dials

I don't see how you could rebuild the case, the chapter ring is toast- would you believe my dog ate the watch! As Euno says, all you're really buying is the movement, and I would think getting parts for a 1035 would be tough. But if you need a 1035, what else can you do?

If that's a rep dial, it's the best damn red sub rep dial I've ever seen! In fact, I'd love to get one if it is. It's light years ahead of the repainted red sub dial in my gen! So, I figure it's got to be GEN! But I can't explain the cg's either. A gen dial in an MBW case with the watchmeisters overlay? Great pics, BTW, hemicuda.

Most of what we are seeing is the DG2813 these days, the watch right above it in the catalog. It's the movement in Josh's Beginmariner and a bunch of other watches. It's a chinese miyota copy, so to speak. I'm not sure which rep watches use the ST6D. The hand sizes on it are oddball, so I don't know where you'd get a set of hands. If you're buying the watch movt strictly for the datewheel and as an experiment, no big deal. $13 is cheap. But like crys says, it probably wouldn't be an easy chore putting it in a watch unless it was a direct swap out for the same movement.

Good job Miquel! A very worthwhile mod.

Taking Jet's thoughts on the TW Best case one step further, I'd then buy Paul's so called Perfect LV: http://www.wo-mart.com/product_info.php?cP...roducts_id=1144 and I'd marry the two watches. Use Paul's dial, hands and movement in the TW case, attach Paul's hollow mid-link band to it, and trim the crown guards. Some genuine parts, a bezel insert, case tube and crown would bring you to the point of perfection. You could put the other spare parts together and give that watch to your favorite brother-in-law, a nephew, or sell it.

Nice job Chief. Great looking watch. You could try Paul for a set of hands. He sent me an extra dial once, but I was ordering a watch at the same time. It's always worth a try. Just thinking out loud on the case tube and crown situation. Would it be possible to remove the stem and crown and file down the top of the case tube w/o messing up the threads? Or maybe put an aftermarket case tube in there, kinda defeats the purpose of using gen parts, but if it works, so be it.