My new-old Serie Speciale

[sneed12]

I bought a blue dial Serie Speciale from Josh last year. My hope had been that due to the unchanged subdial layout, the datewheel wouldn't be too sunken, but no luck. I sent it to Vac to have the datewheel changed to a Breitling font datewheel last summer and I'd been wearing it like this ever since.

You can see how sunken the datewheel is in the second pic.

Last week an interesting watch popped up in the FS section of RWG:

It has a brushed case (which the gen SS does) and the datewheel looked less sunken. I took a chance on it and this is what I ended up with:

I'm really, really happy with how this turned out. The only real annoyance was that the tube pulled off of the main seconds hand and I had to spend a couple of hours gluing/reassembling it.

I found something interesting when I pulled apart the first watch:

There is a plate between the dial and movement! This one has a very interesting complication on it; that's clearly a GMT complication intended to show inside the minute totalizer subdial. In fact I think it's this one:

It has that little arrow thing painted on it too. So this must be a leftover plate from making a rep of this watch. A regular Navi would have a plate moving the minutes to 3 instead.

If you think about it, it makes sense--the factory would have to make different cases with different stem heights for the 6-9-12 and 3-6-9 cases. This is a cheaper, easier solution.

[vmlopes]

Looks nice, and the blue strap (gen?) sets it right off !!

[rafi717]

Great find and a beautiful build! Wear it in good health my friend. If you ever want to part from it, Im sure we can find it a caring home

[Rolexman]

Cool find. Makes sence using this movement (for the maker that is). Did all the Navi SS have the sunken date wheel or only the last batch? The black from the sales ares doesn't seem te be sunken.

[sneed12]

The older Navi SS did not have sunken date, all of the newer ones do. I thought the older ones only came in low-beat movements but this one had a high-beat movement in it.

[hackR]

very sharp...i have an old school fighter, too...and am in the process of brushing it...makes a world of difference...

where did the "breitling date font" datewheel come from?...

[sneed12]

very sharp...i have an old school fighter, too...and am in the process of brushing it...makes a world of difference...

where did the "breitling date font" datewheel come from?...

There was a guy at RepGeek who had some printed last year.

It's not as good as the one in my SOHC but it's a lot better than the stock A7750 datewheel.

[Muaitai]

Hi sneed.12,

On your post you mention this watch here in he forum, I looked everywhere and could not find, could you please post a link or pm me if you still remember where you saw it?

Thanks,

Chris (RWI)

[sneed12]

I saw it in the for sale forum, right here at rwg. They've been out of production for several years now.