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right way to mod?


umairarif

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Hi

Ok I am thinking to mod an omega or breitling. I would like to know what is the right way do it? Should I first choose a rep watch, buy it and then try to find gen parts for it and mod it or should I look and see what gen parts can I get that I can afford and buy the right rep watch compatible with those gen parts and then mod it? 

 

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ok i have choice of few breitling watches and i have seen their gen parts like dials, hands, crowns and pushers available on ebay and other online shops, but would like to know if the reps are compatible with gen parts? skyland avenger, steel fish, black steel and B01. i would like to do the dials mainly and staps or bracelets later.

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This doesn't have to be a chicken-and-egg question.  I don't know much about Breitling modding, but do some research on franken projects that RWG members have undertaken in the past. 

 

If you're thinking about it and it's possible, then it's likely that someone's already done it.  If you're looking at a project that's never been undertaken before, there's probably a good reason for that!

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I agree, Modding projects can be fairly easy, or they can turn into real nightmares. It's very discouraging, especially if you are new ,to go out and buy a watch, with the intent of modding it only to find out that it will not accept genuine parts, or genuine parts are just not available. Quite a few of the major watchmakers who in the past had pretty loose parts policies have started to tighten up on parts. the worst is Rolex, here in the USA, watchmakers with Rolex parts accounts will not sell parts unless you bring in a watch (genuine) for repair. they replace parts as needed, but the old parts are supposed to go back to Rolex. This is one way that Rolex chokes off the used parts market.

I would be very careful about buying parts on Ebay unless you know what you are doing. A lot of the stuff you see on Ebay that's being passed off as genuine is not.

If your interest is Breitling, I would go to the Breitling forum and read as much as you can find about modding the models you are interested in. The guys there are the experts,  you will get the most accurate information from them.

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You still need to be careful. One thing, is the seller with 1000's of sales a seller of high end watches and parts? What you have to be careful of are the folks who are essentially operating a flea market on Ebay. It's pretty easy to get up into the thousands of transactions when you are selling little nick-nack stuff for 1,2 or 3 dollars a pop. Quite often these folks will come across watch parts and sell them on Ebay. They may not even know if the stuff is genuine or not, but they sell it as genuine, and assume the buyers are knowledgeable enough to tell if its real or not. My scam radar warning goes off big time when I see someone selling a high dollar "genuine" watch on Ebay, and their other 2,967 sales have never been over 10 dollars!! No box, no papers, don't really know anything about the watch, usual claim is it was a "Gift" or bought it from a friend, etc. you can pick up some pretty nice things on Ebay, but you have to know what you are looking for and a really good idea of what a genuine part looks like. If you get active on the forum, you can ask older members advice about stuff like parts, etc. better to post a photo and have folks here tell you that the part is fake rather than buying it and finding out later.

 

Now here's the deal, and I'm going to be brutally honest, you can take the advice of folks here and proceed carefully and really come up with something nice, or you can ignore the advice here, buy a bunch of parts, maybe put together a watch, post it here and immediately about 10 members tell you that every part you bought was fake!!

I've been collecting and selling vintage Rolex watches for almost 40 years, I've had a bunch of gens over the years, and a bunch of reps as as well. Even with a lot of experience looking at Rolex watches, I would still not go out and buy any really expensive parts to build say a 6263 Paul Newman Daytona without running photos of the parts by members here. Just doing my due diligence before I hit "buy"

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The first thing I would do is use this lovely resource you're reading right now.

 

Choose one of the models you are thinking of modding and try to search for that.

 

For example you could choose the B01, searching for "B01 franken" gives... hmm, 7 results. Not much.

 

What about the others?

 

skyland franken : 65 results

avenger franken : 180 results

steel fish franken : 3 results

black steel franken : 65 results

 

Looks like the Avengers the one to go for! :)

 

Don't ever forget that this forum (and the other ones) are a brilliant resource for all this kind of information, and also for the guides to doing the work too.

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thanks for you time guys, i have been already told to use this forum, if see some thing post pictures here get advice from experts. yes i will do that, i m spending a lot time searching n reading stuff here coz last thong i want is to loose money foolishly. most of the things up till now are common sense but its very uncommon. i am hopping the real deal will come soon. i will get back to you guys after some more reading and searching.

cheers

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