sneed12

can you add (drill) lug holes to an older noob?

I can't, but I bet jmb can... drop him a PM

Where in here did I state this was CHS or the same watch?

You didn't, but it was stated in the sales thread.

Those are pics that the guy sent you, or pics that you took?

If you have the watch in hand, open it up.

Mine should be here tomorrow I got it off the forum let me know your opinion and congrats on that purchase.

As I mentioned in the sales thread, you did NOT get the same watch.

I've had the one you just bought. It has black dial indices and hands (which is good) but it is NOT CHS. You can tell fairly easily from the pics in the sales thread.

I wrote a tutorial on keyless repair a while ago.

At that point I usually just do a movement swap. I keep a couple of spare serviced movements around just for this reason.

What does "stopped working" mean? What are the symptoms? How old is the movement? Did it get dropped or smacked or something? How frequently did/do you wear it?

Any non-date model (Sub no date, etc) or the Sea Dwellers (SD and DSSD). I think that's it, actually.

Well, this is an eye-opener. I never noticed that the layout of this particular movement was different from the others.

So, this means that there are at least 3 distinctly different (not all parts are interchangeable) A7750 versions (are there more?).

- Low beat (21,000bpm) A7750

- High beat (28,800bpm) A7750

- Daytona Seconds-at-6 A7750

This may explain why, even though I've replaced parts in my daytona movement (with parts from a High bt A7750), it's not working (the escape wheel won't engage properly).

Thanks for the info.

I think you misunderstood what ubi said.

In a very real sense, there is only one configuration of the venerable 7750 movement. All 7750s have exactly the same subdial spacing and layout.

Reps which have different configurations of the subdials use a plate installed on top of the movement, which use transfer gears to move the subdials into different positions. Depending on how much movement is needed, this can end up being quite complex.

However, all movements derived from the 7750--movements like the ETA/Valjoux 7753--use this same idea. The 7753 has transfer gears which move the output shafts to a different place, but unlike the rep makers' transfer plates, the movements are designed and built with this modification in mind, and the transfer gears go underneath the calendar plate. In other words, it's the exact same idea, but a different (higher quality) execution.

The Rolex Daytona uses a movement that's entirely different from any flavor of 7750. It's a Rolex in house movement. Therefore, all three subdials need to be moved (which involves a lot of gearing) including the seconds subdial (which sees the most wear, since it's running all the time). Also, the transfer plate installed on the front of the movement makes the overall thickness even greater (which is bad, b/c the 7750 is too thick to begin with) and increases the stem height (which is bad, for the same reason). That's why all rep Daytona cases have serious flaws--they HAVE to be bigger than a gen case, or the movement won't fit inside.

The actual base movement without the transfer plates, though, should be a standard A7750. You should in principle be able to swap any A7750 into any seconds-at-6 Daytona, pretty much, as long as you match low beat/high beat.

The 7753 has seconds at 9, not 3.

I have 3 or 4 Swiss ETA 2836's, a clone 3135, and an Asian 2836 kicking around in the parts box, but I won't be home until the 26th, I'm on a business trip. If you're still looking then I'll hook you up.

if so I will buy it and re-sell it on the forum but not for my cost but if your nice....

Nice gesture... you're going to make a lot of friends here.

When you manually set it, you are engaging a different drive mechanism. The fact the hand moves when in that mode, tells me it is not the hand.

Could still be the wheel. The two parts are designed to slip against each other, if the tension between the parts is not just right they won't stay together.

What movement is it?

The GMT wheel sits on top of the movement, and it needs some pressure against the movement to stay connected to the calendar gear. Like Ronin says, if the tension washer is missing/out of place/got flattened it won't work.

Easiest thing to do is just take it apart and put it back together. If nothing is actually broken that should fix it.

Just convert your WM9 into a tt, you've already got the dial

Another good point, if you have a WM9 Sub you can convert to TT with bezel, bracelet, crown, dial, and bezel insert. Not too much stuff. You could even do that to one of the currently available TW's.

Honestly, I'd just take a toothpick and some model paint and paint it really carefully. Super simple. Not "easy" but simple. You need a steady hand. Masking that part of the watch would be a PITA.

How do you plan to get it into Switzerland without paying customs? It might be cheapest to fly to the US, buy one here and wear it back.

Also, why can't anyone properly reproduce a Valjoux 72 movement? All the ins and outs to get around design issues could be solved so easily - i think!

Cloning movements is incredibly expensive. Nothing "easy" about it.

The thing that blows my mind is that the cartel watch has this flaw in the first place. The 6'o clock subdial is fake, they could have put it anywhere they wanted to!

Great work! Looks fantastic!

Coming from you, that means a lot. Thanks!

I came across a Noob Explorer II case a while ago, and I'd been saving it in the parts box for a gen dial build. But then life happened (those who saw my big sell-off last week know what I mean) and I couldn't afford to spring for a gen dial.

I sold it, and the member who bought it asked if I would be willing to assemble his gen dial franken for him. Here's some pics.

On the left, the noob case. Gen dial is in the plastic thing. The uncased movement and hands are from my personal Explorer II rep, I wanted to closely compare my dial with the gen dial (mine is pretty good, but not perfect, and compared to the gen of course the lume sucks!). You can also see the DWO which is going to have to be installed since the donor rep (on the right) has the date window in the ETA position.

Donor rep. Has Vaclumed hands, but other than that is pretty mediocre. The dial opening is too big to take the gen dial, it falls right through (I checked).

Movement uncased. You can see the date window position clearly. This was a problem, because on GMT watches there is an additional gear to allow independent adjustment of the GMT hand. You'll see in the next few pics.

Back of gen dial

and after the feet were removed

Pic of movement after installation of datewheel overlay. You can see that the datewheel overlay, because it comes closer to the inside of the movement, actually overlaps the gear that adjusts the GMT hand. I had to remove the gear, and sand it down carefully--not enough and it'll rub on the underside of the datewheel / make date changes hang, too much and it will make the GMT hand adjustment not work. I ruined it the first time by sanding too much good thing I had a spare. You can also see that the center wheel that holds the GMT hand has some springs and whatnot on the underside (the slots on it are the tells); that's what makes it a jumping hour GMT.

Gen dial about to go on

As you can see, I glued the dial spacer ring to the back of the dial after removing the feet. This is pretty much the only way I've found to do this--I've tried very thin double sided tape, which can work ok sometimes, but glue is better. This ensures that the dial doesn't slide around, which would screw up the date window position.

dial installed

hands installed. I flip through a lot of dates setting the hands, trying to get the date change right at midnight. It's much more of a PITA on these jumping hour GMT hands. If you have the regular GMT mod, you just put the GMT hand anywhere and adjust it after you set the hour and minute hands, but on the jumping GMT you have to set the GMT hand as well and it tends to jerk a bit at midnight. Really annoying to get right, but not impossible.

Cased up

Crystal on

Close up under the loupe

Finished product. When I pressed the bezel it made the crystal turn a tiny bit and the cyclops wasn't quite right, so I pulled it and re-pressed it after this pic. Also, you can see a speck of dust on the dial just below the center hole, I blew that off at the same time.

Very happy with how this came out. I wish I could have afforded to buy the gen dial off the member whose watch this is but failing that, this is a pretty close second.

The only thing I wish is that the case was in a bit better shape--I got it used, and it was... not beat up exactly but pretty well used. I rebrushed the bracelet and polished the sides of the case no problem, but the bezel is a bear to refinish and I know it doesn't look good as new. If anyone out there has a Noob Explorer II bezel that's in good shape that they want to contribute to this project let me know. Or if there's a decent aftermarket one. Or if someone has a suggestion on how to do a better job rebrushing the bezel.

Be careful of hand height problems.

No need to look at anything other than the hour hand. It's a rep.

To answere peoples questions about the 3135 movement the guy is willing to show me all 31 jewels in person before purchase.

To reiterate--I don't think you know what you are talking about.

He says it's not the crap clones that are 25J he sells these clones for 400+

Just the jewel count does not a "clone" 3135 make. It's like counting the number of cylinders in a Porsche engine and a Honda engine and finding that they're the same.

A "clone" 3135 would be a movement which could take parts from a Rolex 3135 movement. That's almost certainly not what you're going to get--and again, if you are for $400, I want some.

As for the clone movement I have a source that actually gets a 31 jewel cloned movement that takes gen hands and gen dial and he is selling me a gen dial for 110.00 bucks for the 16610 and if it fails I have a 2836-2 movement lying around that I can slap back in there.

If you can get gen dials for $110 I'll take 30 of them.

And a movement CAN'T take both a gen dial and an ETA dial. The feet are in different places.

I'd like to know what you think a "31 jewel cloned movement" means. I bet it doesn't mean what you think it means.