supermanx

If its anything like the navitimer (and it appears from the pictures that it is)... You have to unscrew both screws on the same link. Then the end of the link comes off and you pull the opposite side out. The middle then just falls out. Tooks me forever to figure this out luckily my dealer joshua emailed in about 20mins, I was doing the same as you, removing one screw from each link i wanted to connect.

Hope that band didn't have sentimental value I was gonna order a new band anyway so figured i'd have some fun, but i actually like it (I plan on oiling it up after it completely dries):

lietztozeiss sent me this beautiful 217 Destro he had up for sale... Transaction was awsome, I couldnt be happier.

I'll store them for 15, but please dont be upset if your piece shows a little extra wear. "No honey, i didnt buy any more reps, people sent these to me to wear for them, and i'm making $5.00 each" She'd love it...

I'd buy one, they can use the markers from the new 251.

Post a couple pics once you receive, I know a few people looking for cheap subs a little better then the noob...

The bracelet is wrong, but replacement links for the gen band are about $75.00 a piece shipped (trust me I bought them before)... so if he had two links that were pretty bad, it was probably cheaper to just buy a rep bracelet.

hey hey now, the SMP quartz is my daily beater... have not had a single problem with it in the ten years i've owned it, and i am extremely rough with it. Plus the time is always right. It does not have quickset date but does have quick hour, so once every month or two you have to scroll the hours to advanced the day. It's nice for traveling to differant time zones though. That one is pretty beat up but you can get the band like new in and hour, there is even a post around here. Also raymond lee jeweler (something like that) on ebay has bezel inserts that are spot on and about $25.00 shipped. Second hand should be red, but this looks as if its pretty old, mine is fading pretty bad... so if he had it serviced recently they may have just taken the red off (does not look good at all though).

He was just setting up his someguy on the internet told me it was ok defense. Unfortunatly with the passing of Johnny C, there aren't many attorneys that would be successful with such a complicated defense.

Same here, I'm not that old so my oldest gen watch is only 12 years old (im 28). Bought my SMP when i was 18 and every year it gets a repolish and brushing, i've replaced a couple links that got bad and this year im changing the bezel because its starting to look faded and scratched, even my second hand has red fading so it will be replaced or retouched. Anyone looking at it would never guess its over a year old.

I tend to aviod handing my rolex to people with calipers in their hands...

There isnt really any adjustments you can make to the retaining bar, but you could try to possibly locate and oem bar (its actually spread bar instead of solid like the rep) if you measure yours I can tell you if the standard smp gen in the same... might make it easier to source one. Otherwise you could try going to a good hardware store and see if you can find something that will fit very snuggly over the bar to give it a little extra girth.

ltz: I want your 217 (damn post office)

Don't worry, if you didnt respond to them in the first 15 minutes they probably already called their mom and borrowed the money to buy an A1 Swiss made Polex SubPar-iner. Bought my first 3 replicas after 2 weeks studying here and another week looking at the AD's studying the flaws in the watches I like and have since bought another 3 (all in the last month, my wife is ubber [censored] but thats another discussion). I'm VERY happy with the reps i've gotten so far and the ones im waiting on appear to be winners too. This place is great... Thanks guys.

Personally for me the bold m kills the mbw lv for me. If I knew a gen parts like dial would swap in like vintage mbw I would have gone that route (if for no other reason then 440 Stainless vs 3xx). The m is just too easy to spot for the rolex novice (at least in my opinion, it just looks out of place). I'll take a little off cg and possibly misaligned cyclops over the fonts which is why i picked joshua (plus when viewing subs at large dealers in vegas with 15-25+ subs you'll see these items vary on each one by some degree). I didnt get the serviced but he didnt have it listed at the time or I would have. Shipping it off to The Zigmeister and a cg mod will get you to joshua's price plus you get a better brushed finish and upgraded bezel, so I may sell the one I have to a friend and go the serviced route. I'm really just waiting on a good review of the serviced joshua before I pull the plug (that and i've purchased 6 reps this month and wife is ready to kill me, she doesn't remember me telling her i was going to buy a gen sub and am now really saving lots of money by buying reps.)

Beats my wife telling me she's going to divorce me after I bought 6 watches this month. (Just kidding.... but not really)

Many times its not only the dealers but their uplines. Joshua may have purchased a stockpile of 111's at $125 to get a better price and get it earlier... 3 weeks later the same upline may have sold it to silix for $80 (since joshua helped cover some of the cost of tooling for more units). Dealers that have stock first get screwed if they arent able to clear out their on hand before prices get slashed in half to the remaining dealers. This is one of the reason there has been such a long wait on the PAM 187, no dealer wants to get stuck with 25 units that they paid double what everyone else is selling for in a month (or a loss $200/unit).

Best sub is also very subjective, since they all have flaws. Do you want better mag or better cyclops location. Better crown guards/case or better font/dial (ie. no bold m in 300m) do you plan on replacing the crown down the road, pt's ultimate is said to beable to take the oem tube with no retreading (according to a post on trc). the list goes on and on. I'm very happy with the sub i got from joshua, it needs a few mod touches but for the price (less then you said you were looking to spend) its very nice, and the mods are not outside my capabilities, so it was a winner for me.

Check your firefox settings, specifically (its possible your firefox was continuing to use cached dns information and ie did a fresh dns request, it was down for me with ie multiple times yesterday though): network.dnsCacheEntries [integer] - This setting determines how many entries should be held in the Firefox DNS (Domain Name System) cache. Whenever you enter a web address in Firefox, it needs to convert that text address into an IP number. It does this by looking up the name and IP number through a DNS server. By holding DNS entries in a local cache, the next time you want to go to the same site Firefox can load it up much faster. By default Firefox holds 20 entries in the cache. I recommend changing this number to match the number of sites you regularly browse each day. More importantly, check the setting below to ensure DNS entries are kept up to date. network.dnsCacheExpiration [integer] - This setting determines how long the cached DNS entries (as set by the network.dnsCacheEntries setting) are held before they are discarded. The default is 60 (seconds), however before changing this setting consider the pros and cons - the longer cached entries are held, the quicker your browsing may be, but the longer it may take for Firefox to be aware that a site which was temporarily considered unavailable (unresolved) is now accessible (resolved).

If you dont know what your doing the LAST THING you should do is take the watch apart. wait to hear from your dealer (especially if its a dealer recommended here).

My wife loves her Nicole Kidman I got from joshua, only noticable differance from gen is the gen has 4 sets of three rows of diamonds apposed to the 4 sets of 2 rows. Of all the dealers i went to around me and in vegas none actually had the diamond version (was looking for a gen po, but thought id check hers out as well). Joshua also has the version without diamonds and they are both very reasonably priced.

Does you arm get tired lugging that thing around all day?

There is a thread on trc, where the genuine tube fit into PT's ultimate without rethreading. You need a new crown/tube/ and stem would need to be trimmed to size. Lee

wow maybe you got a dud. Mine is very good, pearl seamed flat but completely covering the metal used an exacto knife and trimmed a hair all the way around the pearl and gives it a nice shaped (bought a illumidot from ofrei for $10.00 cause i was gonna replace it with that but used it as a template for correct size, one day i will put the illumidot in cause the color is more natural.) Mine doesnt have any of the dial alignment issues that you reported, and the cyclops i think is a little larger then gen but mine is centered to the date window (on gen the 15minute/3'oclock minute marker is covered). Crown guards are not bad but not mod'ed(Josh does offer a mod version that I would think would be compareable to the Ultimate). My bezel was actually aligned, but that should be an easy fix. I posted a wrist shot of mine on this weeks wrist check page 2. Another thing I noticed before I got my lv browsing at a large AD in vegas is that even the rolex's in the same display case vary in the pearl and crown guards to some extent. Josh was really easy to work with and comes highly recommended, im sure he'll be able to fix you up if you give him a chance. Here are some of the best LV photo's ive seen in a while. LV on Ebay

Don't have a breitling dealer local (not that I would have worn it in), but was in a Rolex dealer this weekend to get another watch looked at and the owner spotted my breitling (before I could ask him about my other watch) and thought it was a gen navitimer and wouldn't leave my side with a store full of people. He did offer me 15% off any rolex in stock or special order (and he had just told a person while I was there that they dont discount Rolex).