panerai153

looks pretty good. The rep makers have never gotten the color of the red "submariner" just right, your's looks nice. What happened to the bezel/insert? Do you have them, or did it come without the bezel/insert?

If you source a genuine bezel and a nice insert with a tritium pearl, I think you will have a pretty nice example of a 1680.As alligoat said, the case may be a replacement, certainly wouldn't be unusual to have the crown replaced with the later one at a service sometimes in the past. I would expect that most of the 1680's and 1665's from the 1960's and early 70's have had several passes through RSC's or a Rolex authorized watchmaker with a parts account.These are 40 year old watches, and back then most folks were buying watches to wear everyday, not to put up in a safe. Although a few folks with exceptional foresight or a Damn good crystal ball put watches back with the hopes that they would appreciate, or as a future gift to their son or gransdson,etc. These however, were certainly the exception rather than the rule.

I really like the pre Tiger Chrono. to me they have more utility than the Daytona simply because of the date feature. Wear it well, beautiful watch.

My feelings are ,if you really like the watch, and it's going to be a keeper for a while, I would invest in the service. I sounds like the local guy wasn't really interested in your business, and possibly shot you a really high number to see if you were a mullet and were willing to take the bait. I realize that having one of the forum guys do your work is a fairly long drawn out process, but the results are worth it. Ouside of sending your watch to one of the forum members, I think I would try to find another local watchmaker that would work on reps. If you vlive in a fairly large city, check the yellow pages for watchmakers. Stay away from the AD's and big jewelry stores. try to find and older guy who has a little stand alone shop. Ii believe that there are lots and lots of well trained watchmakers all over the world who are greatly underworked, many of them are now just battery changers for quartz watch owners.

Just my dos centavos

There are tons of them on Ebay, most are probably fake. The older genuine versions i.e. 200 meters/660 feet go for crazy prices.

As someone above said, the distortion and reflection problem is going to be present with the genuine as well. Rolex doesn't AR coat their crystals, so they all have reflection and glare problems to some extent. I wouldn't worry about the genuine crystal. To begin with, they are going to be very expensive, and hard to get. You can't just walk into a Rolex AD and buy one. Rolex doesn't work like that. Second, I'm not sure a genuine will fit your watch without modification, if at all.

It is a very nice DSSD, I'm sure you will enjoy it as is. If I were going to spend any money on it, I would have the movement serviced, the HEV epoxied closed and sealed, and have the dial indices and hands relumed with better superluminova.

I'm not sure how deep these springbars extend into the lug holes in the case, but I would be aware that over time they could very well "bugger" up the threads on your PAM case. If this happens, your up the proverbial creek, should you decide to go back to the conventional PAM screw in bars.

I emailed him and got a pretty rapid reply. this was a day or two after all the new Sub models came out. I ordered a 024A and got fast shipping, tracking number and all around easy seamless trnsaction. the only negative is the payment method. He doesn't have a Paypal account, says it was shut down by Paypal. He accepts Western Union, moneygram, and I believe Moneybookers as well. I would recommend Moneygram as the fees are quite a bit less than WU. WU charges about 10-12%, so a watch that sells for 350.00 USD is going to cost you almost 400.00 USD with the WU fees.

I'm not completely clear about this and will stand corrected if someone more knowledgable chimes in. With the traditional pump up waterproof tester, the watch is suspended above the water while the pressure is raised to X atmospheres. The watch is allowed to stay in this position for 3-5 minutes.This is to give the pressurized air time to find it's way inside the watch IF it has any leaks. The watch is then lowered into the water. If air has entered through a seal, gasket or crystal, the air will begin to escape and form a trail of small bubbles as the pressure is SLOWLY lowered. If this stream of bubbles is observed the watch must be removed from the water before the pressure is released completely, as it indicates a leak. Now here is the problem as I see it with the DSSD's helium escape valve (HEV). If the valve operates backwards as we know some do, while the watch is suspended above the water, pressurized air will enter through the HEV, as it opens inward. When you lower the watch into the water and begin to release the pressure, the watch will NOT leak around the HEV as the pressure inside will keep it closed. WOW you say, my watch is waterproof! Unfortunately, that is not the case, as the air inside the watch kept the HEV closed. If however you take this same watch underwater, at some depth, and probably not too deep, the pressurized WATER will enter the watch through the inward opening HEV. In the tester, the pressurized air isn't going to harm your watch, but if you flood it with seawater, it's toast! I believe that before I took one of these into the ocean, I would be darn sure it has a functioning HEV that opens outward under air (Helium) pressure inside the watch, or the HEV has been sealed with epoxy.

Does this make sense? I just received a call Friday from a respected watch person here on the forum who has my ETZ 2010 DSSD (the latest model that ETZ shipped out to just a few folks before disappearing). I sent it to him to epoxy seal the HEV as it opened inward with very little pressure. He told me that he would not recommend using this watch for scuba or even snorkeling, due to the design of the watch. I had a really bad cell phone connection, and was in somewhat of a hurry, so i really didn't understand just what the problem was, however I will be happy to call him and have him elaborate further. If I'm not mistaken just from the physical appearance of the watch I believe that it is probably an MBW or a Noobfactory watch.

I'm just adding this post as a note of caution to all who have DSSD's. I would hate to have someone think that they had a water resistant watch when in fact it isn't.

I ordered a WM9 SD about a year ago, and expected that I would be wearing it by now. Of course, as all of us who are still waiting know, that hasn't been the case.Having been without a modern SD or Sub since about 1998 when I sold my last genuine Sub, I was really lusting for a new one. I saw this Submariner come up on the sales forum about 2 minutes after mjmj posted it. I immediately PM'ed him about it's mods, availability, etc.Everything worked out and it arrived here on Friday. I am very impressed with the quality of the watch and bracelet. I can see where some of the OCD members of the forum might object to the case/SEL fit, but frankly I have seen expensive genuine watches with far worse SEL's.

It's running very close to COSC specifications by the atomic clock app on my Iphone. It came with a genuine bezel insert that mjmj was kind enough to install before he shipped it out to me.I apologize for the dust specks on the watch.My project on this one is to give it a good cleaning and going over with a Cape Cod cloth, otherwise it's welded to my arm!!

Here are a few photos.

Keep looking! This one isn't much better than the past models. Looks like they are just taking a sub case and adding a GMT dial movement and hands,etc. the crown is way too big and unfortunately, when you replace the crown with a proper size gen, the crown guard opening is going to be too wide.Crown guards are too pointy. With all the Gen 1675's and 16750's floating around at pretty reasonable prices, you would think that the rep manufacturers could make a perfect copy of this watch.

Maybe in a few years when WM9 gets around to making a GMT, we will have a reasonable rep, but we don't have one now.

I've had two root canals in the past few years and neither of them were anything like you describe. i'm an Anesthesiologist by trade so i know a little ablout pain meds and pain relief. my dentist uses local anesthesia plus Nitrous Oxide if you wantt it. I DO!! i sort of hyperventilate the N2O blow off CO2 and it really works. Onece I'm a little woozy from that, he injects the local. Post op for me the most effective pain reliever is Toradol (Ketorolac) 10mg tablets. It's a non steroidal similar to Aleve, but it works much better. i take one 10mg tablet about every 4 hours for a day and that's all. The nice thing about the NSAIDS (non-steriodal antiinflammatory drugs) is the absence of side effects that you get when you take narcotc based pain releivers. non habit forming, no impairment of facilities. Only down side is you can only take them for a few days as they decrease platelet forming.

Any of the PAM's that are 44mm or larger. I think the new DSN Submersibles are really really nice. As far as the leather straps, they can be made to any length.Possibly the Rolex DSSD, however you would probably have to get extra bracelet links to make it fit.

Very nice!! I would take it in a heartbeat. BTW I like the Comex dial.

Those are pretty nice watches. I think that one thing that all of them are lacking in are the OGEV (Original Gas Escape valve) ring doesn't line up like it should, but none of the other reps do either, and some genuines are rotated out of position as well.

How is the lume? I have one from ETZ, the 2010 version, and the lume glows brightly for a few minutes and then rapidly fades away. That can be fixed if you want one that glows like a torch, you can send it off to one of our forum watchsmiths for a lume job. Otherwise wear it in good health.

I found the ofrei pearl to be quite green and plastic. Is the OEM replacement from Rolex the same color and texture? Is supposed to be a lumi service replacement?

That's the problem. the correct pearl for the 1680/1665 would be a tritium pearl. the Ofrei pearls are lumi. they are much "greener" than the tritium pearls after light exposure. i have the same problem with a genuine Tudor 9411/0 The original insert was replaced during a service several years ago. They replaced the insert with one that has a lumi pearl. It's whiter in the daylight and in the dark it's the only thing on the watch that glows. unfortunately, tritium pearls are pretty hard to come by and they aren't cheap. I can live with mine like it is, until a tritium comes along one day.

generally, and I say this because it isn't always the case, the screw is softer than the stainless steel case body. I have found this in the case of threaded lug bars. The screw threads will strip before the lug threads. So I would follow the advice of the poster above, get a few extra screws from your dealer. If the screw holes are stripped out on the case, then I would suspect your only alternative is to recut the threads and try to find a screw that will work.

I have to agree. unless you are in desperate straits, or have another "grail" that is singing the sirens song to you, keeping it and enjoying it would be the most prudent thing to do financially. You probably aren't going to get even close to what you have in the watch. Just as and example, if you look in the sales posts in the past week or so, another member sold one very similar to yours. Genuine movement, very nice aftermarket case, genuine almost everything. He said he had around 4.5K in the watch, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. He sold it in the past couple of days for around 2750.00 USD or roughly 60% of what he had invested.Once you get into the price range you are looking at, the buyer pool shrinks dramatically.And because it's a franken, no matter how good, your only sales outlet is on the rep forums. You can't post it on the vintage Rolex forum, TZ or WUS sales forums because it's a fake by their standards.

Almost everyone on the forum that has been here for a while has similar stories. Quite a few of us have had franken MBW's 1665's 1680's with almost everything genuine but the movement and MBW case. I have had several over the years and every one of them topped out at close to 1000.00 USD before it was over with. I believe that the most I got for one was around 700.00 USD and that was with a genuine bracelet and end links thrown in. That was back in about 2005, but the same thing holds true now.

Another problem that I encountered was folks who saw MBW 1680, and couldn't believe I was asking 900.00 USD for a 400.00 USD watch. What they were failing to realize was all the genuine stuff was way more expensive than the original cost of the watch, plus a trip up to The Zigmeister for a movement service, relume and installation of all the bits and pieces.To a lot of folks, who buy them and wear them right out the box, and never spend a dime on mods, I was a crazy scammer trying to sell a 400.00 USD watch for 900.00 USD.

I really believe that some folks here enjoy the hunt for scarce parts and building something from nothing so much that they reconcile themselves to the fact that when it's built and they are itching to start another project, they can sell it even though they are going to take a beating on it. Move it out and start over with something else. there are others here, and I fall into this catagory, that would rather take that 4500.00 USD and buy a genuine, maybe not a 1680, but a pretty nice 16800, knowing that if It's kept up it will hold it's value and possibly appreciate.

Just my Dos Centavos

Freddy's absolutely right. I take all this QC hoopla with a gigantic grain of salt! I definitely remmber that POC DSSD that ETZ sent me. I was one of the really lucky ones who got a good 2010 version from them in return before they disappeared.

Place a watch on the hook inside of a pressure tester. Close the lid of the tester. Pressurize the tester.

Now here is the important part ... if the watch leaks, it will fill with pressurized air. If it does not leak, it will not fill with anything.

Lower the hook and watch now into the water of the tester. Once it is submerged, slowly release pressure from the tester via it's release valve.

If the watch has a leak, the pressurized air from inside of the watch will now come streaming out, making many many bubbles.. You must draw the watch out of the water with the hook. No water has gone into the watch because it was streaming out pressurized air.

This is the standard for "waterproof' testing, just be darn sure you take the "bubbling" watch out of the water before you let all the pressure off. If it's still submerged when the pressure is completely released, water is going to get inside through the same opening the bubbles came out of.

Thanks very much for all the info. It looks like it's going to be OK. I took the caseback off and wiped the moisture off the inside of the caseback and spacer ring. i put it back in the jar with the container of dissicant, re sealed it and put it on a windowsill in sun. I left it for 2 days. Took it out lasst night and every bit of moisture is gone from under the crystal and inside where I can see. I re greased the o-ring and put the caseback on. I will still send it off to get the movement looked at,as there could be moisture still inside.

the only solution to this problem, if you want them on a winder and kept wound is to purchase a winder that allows you to set each winder individually. I have a Steinhausen which worked very well for about 5 years before it started to fail. First one winder went out then the second, I think now only one out of 4 still work. I finally gave up on winders after having about 4 over the past 10+ years. I like the security of keeping my watches inside a fireproof safe, so it's not possible to use a winder anyway.For all the newer quickset watches, it's simple to reset the date. Another thing, if you leave your watches on your wiinder for a couple of weeks, the time will be off at least a couple of minutes and they will need to be reset anyway.

The Tudor date magnifier is more to the edge of the crystal.. its a t-115 or something i think. I know its definatly not a t-127 because i have an old gen crystal off my old Snowflake and its not the same date position. You would also need the correct movement with the datewheel out further.. not sure if you can mod the 2824 to move the datewheel out... Doing a non-date would be a lot easier thats the only reason why i suggested going that route.

Tudor Crystal is a T-125. The cyclops is closer to the edge of the crystal. you can find them on the vintage Rolex forums for around 125-150 USD for a new one. I believe the ETA date wheel is going to be off center with a genuine Tudor Snowflake dial. I would try to source a Tudor movement and dial or and aftermarket dial that's set up for a Tudor movement.

Here is my genuine 9411/0 . the only thing mine needs is a tritium pearl, as the insert was changed several years back by Rolex San Francisco and they replaced the old insert with a new Lumi insert.

The dissicant is inside a metal container, looks like little beads inside. I put it in the oven (The dissicant container) last night for 2 hours @ 265 degrees which is what I read on the internet for recharging the drying agent. I'll check it in the morning and see whats happening.

Thanks

I took my 063 out of my watchbox in my safe yesterday and immediately the crystal fogged. I put it in a sealed jar with some dissicant material immediately with the crown all the way out. unfortunately this morning it looks about the same. I took the back off a little while ago, and there is definitely water inside. Not like it was running out, but droplets on the caseback as well as fog on the crystal. I put it back in the dissicant jar with the back off, but I'm pretty worried about permanent damage. It's running, but I don't know for how long. Anyone have any further suggestions. I would pack it up and send it up to The Zigmeister but he's still off and all I get is an automated response from his email server. i don't have the skills or the tools to tear it down. I'm sure the movement will need to be serviced and relubricated at the least.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

thanks

Not only are the Chinese movements better, there are several other alternatives to ETA. Ocean 7 is already using the Sellita movements, others are using myiota and some Soprod. So it's not going to be the end of the world if ETA stops selling movements. What it may end up being is a really bad business decision for ETA, as they are probably geared up to produce X number of movements. If all the smaller watch companies start using other movemednts, it will seriously cut into the total numbers that ETA produces every year. I think Nicholas Hayek was a business genius. He took Swatch from a obscure plastic "throwaway" watch company to a mega billion dollar watch conglomerate, but he was obsessed with the idea that he could control the watch industry by controlling the movements. He should have learned a lesson from the Hunt brothers from Texas who thought they could corner and control the Silver market a couple of decades ago.What he failed to grasp was one of the most common tenents of business, When there is a need, someone will step up and fill that need. Obviously, the Chinese as well as others are prepared to do just that.