OK, I'm proud of this one...

[Tribal]

Do you retapped the case to fit the tube?

I have a old MBW Sub 16610 and i want to change the Tube,but the inner Diameter of the tubehole on the case is smaller than on newer MBW's..

I'm thinking to drill out to the right diameter and retap it.

Do you have bought the right retaptools for it?

I must say its a great and stunning watch...

Awesome work on it,i like it a lot....

I hate you for the insert

Well done Avitt

Rg Tribal

Edited May 16, 2006 by Tribal

[Bazz]

I also am curious about how you went with the retap. I also have an older mbw LV which like tribal said has a smaller tube hole in the case and would like to drill it out and retap at some stage. Great job!

[Guest avitt]

The whole case tube situation befuddled me...

I was thinking, based on everyone else's experiences, that this would be an easy Remove and Replace job.

The removal part was easy...there didn't seem to be any glue used (as I'd seen mentioned on other MBW cases). I use a small screw-extractor to remove tubes.

I had already bought a helfands tube, and I expected to be able to screw it right in. However, it required a lot of force to insert. I figured I might have messed up the threads when I countersunk the hole. So I grabbed an old tube that was lying around, and I tried it....it screwed right in, without a problem. I grabbed a couple more tubes (1 or 2 from DW cases, and even a generic 6mm tube from Ofrie)...All of them screwed in with no problem.

So I thought I would just use some more force on the helfands tube. I was able to screw it in, but it was cockeyed..tilting off to one side. This really looked unacceptable when the crown was on.

My next step was to try another Triplock tube, from another vendor. I ordered a couple from Cousins. Guess what...the same thing happened! The tube started into the hole at an angle. Since the Cousins version has a longer threaded area, I thought i would really mess things up if I tried to force it.

The only solution that I could think of was to try to clean up the threads with a tap. So, I ordered these, from eBay:

Rolex Case Tube Tapping Tool Set

I used the tap, which did actually remove a few shaving of metal. After that, both of the Triplock tubes would screw right in. I decided to use the helfands tube, as I thought it sat up against the case a bit closer. I also used a little adhesive on the threads, primarily for water resistance, since I didn't use a gasket under the tube.