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*Photo report* Project Breitling BCE~Rhodium -->rotor mod update


Rolexman

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Hi Guys,

I just wanted to share my latest project. I bought a pristine Breitling Evo from my fellow country man Wimpie007 because I'm a sucker for the Evo. To be honest with you I must have owned all dial colors and variation at some point. It started out with the Graphite from ANgus back in the days and over the years I owned the blue, Arabic, black etc.

But somehow the Evo never sticked around. If I needed money for a project the Evo would be the first to go. Why you ask? I have no idea. Maybe it's so easy to just buy a new one :lol:

Now enough with the chit chat. Over to business. This Evo has the Rhodium plate and let me tell you... that's something different. It must be one of the best looking dials I've ever seen. It shifts from colour all the time and it gives the watch a real high-end look to it. From all the BCE dials this one must be one of the coolest.

With the courtesy of Wimpie007 here are some pics of the watch as I received it. It was brand new and not a single mark or scratch was present. Wimpie is real anal just like me so that is good.

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There it was a brand new Evo and I decided it was nice enough to keep so what was up next? First up was a full tear down and service!

Here you can see the dial uncased. A true beauty :wub:

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Although the movement ran okay it was dirty, like all A7750s and there were blobs of oil everywhere.

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Look what I found mam! An extra jewel end metal part floating around :wiggle: ....

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Completely taken apart waiting for it's bath

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Movement ready and waiting for the rest. I replaced all the blue screws with silver ones. Makes a huge difference!!

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Now let's also do something about that ugly green pearl and hands. Funny how all V4s have that.

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Ready to be scraped clean...

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All clean and polished rim...

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Relumed nice and white

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Best looking pearl on the block :lol:

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And what about those green hands? (hour hand already stripped)

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Nice and white

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Ready to reassemble

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Also a little mod to the ugly white ´rep screaming´ etched ´B´ on the side of the bezel

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Time to make it Waterproof and check all the seals (yes, ALL the seals)

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3 seals in the crown (2 in the tube and 1 in the crown [not on picture]

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Then it's time to put everything together, waterproof it and enjoy the fruits of our labour. All it needs is a genuine brown calf :wub:

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Hope you enjoyed it!!

Cheers! :yeah:

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UPDATE:

As you can see in the pic above I used an Asian Breitling signed rotor. It can be recognized by the jig saw ball bearing in the middle. As it is a big tell I decided to try to mod it. Although Francisco did a write up over at Repgeek some time ago about changing the Asian ball bearing to a Swiss. I didn't like the fact he used glue to secure the Swiss ball bearing. IMO no proper watch maker uses glue....

So I experimented a bit with some Dremel pieces in order to create the lip that is needed to secure the Swiss ball bearing ring. As you can see in the picture below you need a 2 stage lip.

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I experimented a little and off course I f*cked up some rotors B)

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But after some trial and error and trying some different bits I found the exact cone shaped piece to create a perfect lip. Here's the Asian rotor with the Swiss ball bearing. Secured like it should, without glue!

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All it now needs is a balance C@ck with a regulator. I will be changing that tomorrow and after that it will look 99% the same as a genuine Caliber B13.

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Guest zeleni kukuruz

Woow great writen and all cool pics :) i always thought this b-ling was to huge for my skinny ass wrist, how big is it? And with the ss band i think the weight is pretty heavy right? A nice brown leather lie you said would be best!!!

I found it very nice, its growning on me!!!

Thanks for a great reading friend!

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Thanks for all the nice comments guys.

Woow great writen and all cool pics :) i always thought this b-ling was to huge for my skinny ass wrist, how big is it? And with the ss band i think the weight is pretty heavy right? A nice brown leather lie you said would be best!!!

I have a 7,25" wrist and the 44mm fits perfect. I think the weight is just fine. On a calf it is nicely balanced. On SS it is kinda heavy. Don't have a scale so I can't weigh it. IMO you don't wear this watch on SS anyway as it is too bling ;)

Care to share what your bezel mod entails?

The 'B' on the side of the bezel is lasered and has sort of a white sheen to it. It sticks out like a sore thumb. What I've done is give it 800 grid grind and a high polish afterwards. This way the 'B' looks nice and clean and is only visible under certain lighting like the gen.

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  • 4 months later...

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