alligoat

Try www.ofrei.com, or julesborel.com for a stem in the US, or Cousins in the UK. I guess you know which ETA movement you have, they'll need that. It might be quicker to call them. Also, a local watch place might be able to help you, depending on where you are. To remove the stem, open the caseback, you might have to take the movement out of the watch, and you depress the buttonjust below where the stem comes out of the movement w/ a 1.2mm screw driver, while pulling on the stem. Look around here cause there are tutorials on how to do this. If the stem is broke of in the movement, I'd being taking a trip to the local watchmaker!

Here's my interpretation of the Ubimariner, white sub dial and the Yachtmaster bezel. I don't know if you call it a Yachtmariner, or a Submaster. I had the silver sub bezel on it first, but didn't like it, so I put the Yachtmaster bezel on. I probably would have liked the silver sub bezel better if I had taken the red off of the pearl.

@ 2005submariner, Actually the bridge on the movment in your 090 is a copy of the bridge on the Rolex 3135 movement. The 3135 dates from the late 80's, whereas the ETA 2824/2836 series dates from the early 70's.

Asian movements are improving by leaps and bounds. Witness the 7750 improvements in the last year. And some of the Seagull movements that I have seem to be doing very well- they keep great time and after a year and a half are still going strong. TTK's tuned sub w/ the asian 21j is another example, it will be interesting to see how it holds up over time. All in all, I expect the Chinese to fill the gap if the ETA's become scarce. But stocking up on a spare ETA or two wouldn't be bad insurance, although I think parts will still be available. Nowdays' it's cheaper to replace an ETA if much goes wrong, but in the future, that may not be the case.

BTW, it was Moelarrycu, for Mark Greenberg- just can't keep the three stooges straight! Seems like I've seen a twinlock sub tube on the bay lately...

It's always good to know that whichever watch you choose, you'll be covered in the event of SPILLAGE at Starbucks. What I do like about the SD is the 4000ft=way too deep for mere mortals. I went down 90 feet this summer and next summer, I may try for 120! No helium for this boy.

To add to what Finepics has said, most watches w/ ETA movements are real ETA's. The Chinese are replicating the 6497, the 7750, and who knows what else, and sometimes you may get sold a bill of goods (scammed), but most of the time, especially if you buy from our dealers here, you will get a real ETA. But your jeweler should be able to take the back off of your watch and see that it is a real ETA. If you can buy an ETA here in the US for $60+, you must realize that wholesale is half that if not less. ETA's are assembled in the far east, Malayasia, etc. and put into these watches for under $50. Granted, we are paying more because of the middleman, but that's ok. These watches aren't a piece of crap by any means anymore. ETA is also going to stop selling their movements in maybe 2009. They won't stop producing, but they won't be selling like they are now to outside parties. So this will be an intereesting development over the next few years and it will be interesting to see how it impacts our hobby.

If the bezel won't turn, more than likely there's crud up in there restricting it. You could try squirting WD-40 up there, but you don't know if the watch is waterproof, but you can take a chance. Next would be to pop the bezel. You put a knife or razor blade under the bezel and gently pry it up, moving around the watch slowly and keep lifting. I'm thinking it's a CN (Chinese) sub, so when you pop the bezel, you got to be careful, because there's a click pin and spring in there underneath and those boogers will pop out onto the floor, they're tiny! When you get the bezel off, maybe rinse it off, check the tension spring and while you're at it, replace the bezel insert- the black thing. Separate it from the bezel (the silver ring) and install a new insert. Once you put in a new insert, you might have to glue it, just pop the whole assembly back on w/ your thumbs and fingers. I like the bezel inserts from Lee Raymond Jewelers on ebay, pearls ok and it fit my CN sub w/ a little bit o' glue.

Last month the crown on my 1680 (c. 1978) stripped, that is the part that the stem screwed into. I ended up having to go with the 24-7030 crown and tube which is the current Rolex crown and tube. Rolex would update your 5513 with that crown and tube, if you sent it in for service. Since then, I bought a crown from larrymoecu (Mark Greenberg out of NYC) on ebay which fits my old style triplock case tube. The old style case tube did not have an external gasket and the crown has three dots and will not fit the new current 24-7030 parts. I believe that this previous assembly was #24-7020. If your crown has three dots it is this assembly, more than likely. Prior to that, there was 24-7010, possibly. Of course, all of this is confused by the fact that sometimes you see other numbers thrown out there, #395, 399... Check out ebay, search 'Rolex crown' and see what comes up. Ubiquitous might also be of some help.

It might be worth asking DW if he could make a white dial (or is it silver?) like that. They always say it can't hurt to ask. The 6238 dial wouldn't work, because it doesn't say Cosmograph, but rather Chronograph- from the pre Daytona era. Skeet and Urul shows a pic of an early (60's) 6239 with a similar all silver dial, like the pic Ubi posted- could be the same watch, but I can't see Ubi's pushers. The 6239 had the round pushers- non screw-down type. S&U call it extremely rare.

The current high bidder on this watch, hebe75, is obviously actively building Daytona reps! Looking at his recent feedback, we see that he's bought 3 Tropic 21's, two train wheel bridges, a Paul Neman dial, a v72 movt, a Wittnauer v72 case (?), a Daytona case kit, and a few purchases from jdm_k20, who we all know sells Daytona stuff. Hebe75 is in France. Having spent over 2k in the last couple of months, it's plain to see that he's pretty serious about this pursuit- the fabrication of Franken-tonas.

Is it an optical illusion, where it is below the minute hand, but above the hour hand and you just can't tell from that picture angle?

Pretty interesting, a Buy It Now Price of $5999.99, I guess $9100.00 is out of the question, this time around!

I'm with Avitt, that watch looks pretty damn good. I'd love to see the movement, but a Rolex service at Geneva is a pretty good reference. Up over $20K, I bet this will be fun to watch! Crap, it ends on Thanksgiving Day and I gotta go to the outlaws.

You could file the back side of the bezel insert and maybe it would fit better. Some people have gone so far as to file the inside of the bezel itself, to better seat the insert. When you're talking a no crown guard sub, Rolex no longer makes those parts. Maybe a 5513 bezel insert might work, but the pearls on the aftermarket inserts are too large and gens are hard to come by. Michael Young at www.classicwatchparts.com/ is another possibility. He makes vintage bezels for around $200!

I don't know about the TW classic, mine have been CN cases. But pulling out the TW case tube would be the first order of business- Ziggy's rat tail file works pretty good for that, take out the inner o-ring w/ the tweezers and jam the file in there (movts out, of course) and turn counterclockwise. If the TW casetube happens to have grooves, you could use an appropriate tool, but I have yet to see a rep case tube w/ grooves. At that point you can compare the two sets of threads and if they appear different, then it's time to get the hole tapped to be safe. If the threads match, you can always try turning the gen case tube in by hand until you meet resistance. If you get 3-4 turns, you're probably OK. Pull it out, put some glue on and tighten her up. Tapping the hole is just a matter of running the tap in the hole and turning it until you're satisfied that you gone far enough to seat the case tube correctly. As I recall, drill size for a fresh hole would be 2.6mm and the tap is a 3mm tap (but don't hold me to that). But you already have a hole, so all you would be doing is running the tap in.

I picked up a gen crown on the Bay, but I already had a gen case tube (and gen case). You'll need both the crown and the case tube if you're going to put a gen crown on your watch cause the gen crown most likely won't fit the rep case tube. You could also use an aftermarket case tube from ofrei.com (6mm), or Rolex PN 24-6020, I believe, for the Datejust. Keep looking for oyster bracelets on the Bay(search- rolex bracelet). I bought a $20 oyster bracelet w/ the safety clasp for a sub and put it on my $60 CN Datejust (anothere watch)- same 20mm lug width. Now I have an $80 Datejust, great for working out, sweatproof, etc. Next I'm going to grease the o-rings and pressure test it. BTW, it keeps great time.

Harbor Freight has a watch crystal press w/ nylon dies for $10-15 depending on whether or not it's on sale. They also have a rotary tool kit (Dremel) on sale for $7.99, a duster for $1.99, and 6" digital calipers for under $20. I like to think of it as Chinese tools for working on Chinese watchers.

What makes you think you need to tap the hole? First you should remove the rep tube, which is the hardest part, then you can compare the threads on the rep to the gen. A lot of times they'll match up ok and you can just screw the gen in. Ziggy did this on one of his tutorials when he swapped out the tube and crown. I've done ok on a couple of mine, but that's not to say all rep tubes have the same hole threads as the gen. We already know the outside threads (where the crown screws in) don't match on rep and gen. You can buy the tap from ofrei.com, 6mm, but you have to buy the 5.3mm with it since they're sold in pairs. Around $40. Any watchmaker who works on reps should be able to do it for you, if you don't want to try it yourself. I'd think it's a $15-25 operation. You'd also need the tool for screwing in the gen tube, although some people have gotten by w/ a Torx screwdriver. You might use loc-tite or GS hypocement on the threads when putting the tube in, for waterproofing purposes.

Of course there's a reason- shills are running the price up, but the proof is in the pudding. If it gets relisted, maybe the shill got stuck with it. And if a real bidder balks, we'll never know about it.

Wow! This last Franken just sold for $8561.00. Absolutely mind boggling! http://cgi.ebay.com/rolex-daytona-cosmogra...tem140051436038 It just doesn't make sense to me, don't these people know what they're buying?

Whoops! Wrong again, 7750's are Hour- 2.00mm Minute- 1.20mm Center Seconds .25mm Subdals- .17mm So they won't fit the 2892 sizes, except for the center seconds at .25mm

I'm thinking that the hand sizes are the same: 90/150/25 for all of the ETA's in the 2800 series and the 7750's, Ziggy posted sizes for the 7750's a while back.

In repairing a two tone Submariner, the stem snapped at the base of the crown. I'd like to find a rep crown, because I don't really want to pay for the Rolex 18K 7mm crown and a gen tube (or aftermarket tube). I just don't feel like paying $100 to repair this watch! Does anyone know where to find one of these, preferably in the USA?

You gotta love it when stuff fits! And your datewheel lines up with the window and cyclops and looks great! Cool watch.