High Crystal on a DD

[BigSlickAK]

Has anyone tried this look? I've seen some rare pieces that already come with the "tropic" or high curved glass or plastic crystal.

I took the bracelet off my "DD" and checked the case# at the 12. Apparently it's a 116264. Which equates to a Turn-0-graph casebody.

Currently it has the flat sapphire cyrstal which sits about a few mm above the bezel.

Can anyone help me find a part # that will fit, from the listing of Generic curved pieces at

http://www.ofrei.com/page419.html

[kbh]

I can't help you with O'frei, but you ought to try Clark Watch Parts on eBay. Gary Clark will answer your e mail very quickly and he stocks a lot of generic Rolex crystals of excellent quality. He will also know which part you're looking for.

I believe his user name is Nostalgia2000.

[BigSlickAK]

Will do kbh, thanks!!

[alligoat]

What you have in mind is kinda like reverse engineering. Older Datejusts had plastic crystals, 1600, 16013, 16014. Then around the late 80's Rolex introduced the 16200 series of Datejusts w/ the sapphire crystal. Maybe the Day-Date also went with a similar numbering scheme- 18033 to like a 18233 model number when they went to the sapphire crystal. Now all modern Men's Rolexes use the 25-295-C sapphire crystals, AFAIK.

But here's the rub, a 1162xx case is not made to take a plastic crystal. If you did find one that fit, the bezel would in all likelihood not fit over it like it should since the side of the plastic crystals are wider than the sapphire assembly. So then you'd have to find another bezel- more trial and error, mucho frustration.

And since you're dealing with a rep, the chances of anything fitting are purely hit or miss- rep sizes are typically not the same as gen- in some cases they're getting closer (WM9, Euromariner), but there are no guarantees.

The only thing I think you could do is find maybe a gen 16014 case and fit a DD dial and 2836 movement in there- if the dial will fit- the rep dial might be a bit too big. But all you can do is try.

[kbh]

For what it's worth, I put an old gen DJ plastic crystal off of a 16014 into a rep Explorer II and it fit. Looks pretty good too. Of course that was replacing a rep plastic one.

I wasn't aware that the newer DJ's had a different sized bezel? Interesting, I was thinking about changing one.