Movement swap/upgrade

[watchguy51]

I have long collected interesting watch movements, and recently acquired a Favre Leuba 269 (little, extremely durable low beat auto movement) that I think would be perfect for an Explorer 1016. I think a couple of the mechanisms in it (at least the winding mechanism) are based on that joint GP-FL-JLC-Zodiac A.Schild based movement that people managed to fit the Rolex mov't hands to, and I was hoping to do the same.

Is there anyone here who I can send my watch to, so I can pay to have it done by someone more professional at this than me? Anyone with advice, experience, etc.? If I sent it off, I guess it would have to be with all types of different hands to try out on the movement to see for sure which ones fit... or I'd send it to someone who has a whole big stash of hands to try.

I was also thinking I should get a different 1016 for this.

Thanks!!

Edited May 11, 2011 by watchguy51

[Ronin]

If it is an AS Movement (vintage), it will be impossible to find "Rolex Style" hands for it as the AS's use 90/130/22 -vs- ETA 90/150/25 -vs- DG/Miyota 100/152/17. Minute hand is only common denominator.

You also need to take in consideration of stem alignment.

[watchguy51]

It's actually an in-house Favre Leuba movement (based on their manual wind 253), but during this era there was some sharing of a couple aspects of FL automatics (winding mechanisms, etc) that were shared with a joint production A.Schild based movement that FL, GP, Zodiac etc built on. One of the movements with that base was Zodiac's GMT 75B, which was used here in this project which I was thinking of:

While it is a completely different movement than this FL 269, there was a bit of component sharing between these firms during this era, so I thought perhaps this too could fit Rolex mov't fitting hands (which after some consultation, I believe are on this 1675 build). But who knows.

I thought maybe there were some modders here that need a little business and have a big stash of hands to test out on this thing. I also figured that being a no-date watch, things would be a bit more feasible.