Logan

There are considerably more pivots turning when the chrono is running, Many of these are non-jeweled, and often not even lubricated on rep movements. I never run the chrono on rep 7750's for that reason.

The spring within the crown is there to reduce pressure on the movement when the crown is pressed it, in this case by the crown lever. If you use an unsprung crown its important to set the depths accurately to ensure the crown does not force the stem back into the keyless works. One way to do this is to loosen the movement holder screws slightly then gently close the crown lever and see if the movement shifts. If its does the place a slight thicker o-ring under the crown and repeat.

This is a problem with the movement, and will stuff the movement if you keep winding it. There seem to be be two contributing reasons. (well according to recent posts here). One is the slipper clutch sticks, and secondly the click spring is too short. The Zigmeister did a post on the slipper issue a few months back, and GBD did a great post on repgeek regarding the click spring issue. Sorry no links, but can't be hard to find.

There are two reasons for this, Both require a movement service (or at least partial service). The two possibilities are a sticky slipper clutch, or a incorrect length click spring. Both of these problems were posted on fairly recently. Do a few searches and hopefully you'll find the posts.

Impossible to get the movement and near impossible to fit to the old case as the date wheel doesn't line up with the dial, and the date pusher is probably cut down..

Check the hair spring.. sometimes an impact can cause the spring to hang up on the mounting posts.

These are a nice rep.. but you're right, they do need some work to bring up to standard. Heres some tips.. The bezel markers are fiddly to do, you really need to remove them (just glued) and gently smooth the edges, then re-glue with decent adgesive (JB Weld is good). The current glue is not strong and they fall out soon enough if you don't re glue them The crown guards on Arktos are usually rubbish.. no idea why. Best to fit another. I used a V "h" series. The bezel has a click spring under formed from flat stainless, the bezel is held in place with an octagonal wire spring. Its bloody hard to remove the bezel (I havn;t managed so far). If you could remove it then you could make a heavier spring.. but very tricky.. maybe best to just live with this one. The movement is a 7750. You can't swap this to and ETA. Service the current movement, its fine. Hope that helps..

Personally I think the only real hope for any of these type movements (daytona, seconds at six, nine, 12 etc) is the graphite treatment, or perhaps the DLC plate treatment. You're up against a fundamental problem which is that you've got a whole load of extra gears that the movement was never designed to drive. Unless you can drastically reduce the friction load on them you'll always have the same problems. In the long term pretty much all the Daytona's died, pretty much all the seconds at six IWC's died.. So far the AP Offshore movement seems better a little better, but it still has the same basic issues.

Maybe you could find the old posts on Replicacollector.. but as best I remember: Yes they are genuine, and yes they are for replacement on older cases to ensure a tight fit if the threads get a bit worn. I'm guessing Rolex tap the threads out each time to remove old thread lock etc. The source on ebay was a seller called Ponycar350 (I think..) and he had a whole load of these and a few other genuine Rolex spares brought as a batch from somewhere. It was posted at the time that Rolex have several graduations of tube, and taps to match, depending on the case condition.

No.. not unless you know someone.. I found a few jeans etc at Sim Lim square.. and thats it.

Ok, just did some measuring of the tubes I have here. The regular tube has a 2.95mm size thread, the oversize has a 3.01mm thread. I don't have anything to measure the exact thread pitch, but from memory the regular tap size is a 3mm x 3.5mm pitch.

Yes back in replicacollector.com days there were a bunch of tubes available that were over sized. I forget the name of the guy selling them but lots of us brought them via ebay. This is probably 4 years back I guess. Apparently there were made over size for Rolex service centers during service. It seems they had an oversize tap to do this with. I still have a couple here somewhere.

Sadly that suggests many those people put down deposits purely for the speculative profit potential of the watch.. and have no real interest in it.

Spectacular result.. Congratulations to #46

I really do need to see one of these in person.. from some angles its really looking very good..

A good cheap oil for most uses is La Perle, it comes in a 10ml bottle so its great value. If you want the proper setup the you need the following Moebius oils and greases: 9010 for jewels 941 for pallets for slower beat movements (6497's) 9415 for pallets on higher beat movements (most 7750's and 28xx) D5 for most chrono parts, keyless works and date change parts 9501 for "frictions", ie cannon pinions, and slipper clutches in winding mechanisms. The ETA charts from their web site have great breakdowns and oiling guides to follow.

When you see pics like this you realize how incredible Rolex's build quality is, and how far the rep's really do have to go to match it

There are heaps more pics of this up now on www.puristspro.com

How ironic that the first pic I see of this long awaited watch is via a replica site.. As for the watch, yes it looks great, Red sure seems to be the fashion on watches at present. I could see a fairly good rep being made with a PVD case, but the forged carbon is going to make a really good rep tough. Unless our chinese friends figure out how to make it look the same in plastic of course !!

Rolex recommends a Clean leather buff stick in their technical docs..

Very Nice.. Does HK Tan has a web site or photo album these days? I remember he used to be a regular poster on one of the boards (replicacollector??) but I haven't seen him in a while

Super informative post. My Big Bang has exactly these symptoms..

You should assume all movements in reps are non-oiled, unless you have a good reason to believe otherwise. (a good reason would be an inspection by an experienced watchmaker) Even those that are oiled are often not done well. Any watch you intend to keep long term should be serviced. The movement isn't nearly as complex or fragile as the 7750 but can still have major problems if not oiled. Both movements are 28,800 beat, so the second hand should technically be similar in both cases. A very jerky second hand on any eta 28xx swiss or chinese usually means a dirty movement. The CHS (correct hand stack) version of both movements is terrible, stay well away. Its seems they all break. The IHS (incorrect hand stack) is fairly good, but often not well oiled. Correctly oiled with appropriate oils its not a terrible movement, although you'd be well advise to leave the GMT hand adjustment alone regardless.

Classic..

Both the 2824 and the 2836 are commonly used in Reps. The 2836 is often used in date only configuration as well just to confuse things.