Should I mod/fix my watch to get it how I like?

[pepperbox]

I recently picked up my first rep, a Clean GMT Master II

Overall, I like it but for me the watch just has too many minor flaws for me to feel like its worth keeping. The watch looked great in QC, but in person its a bit different.

To prefeace, I've never handled a gen rolex. I didn't buy this

Problems in order from biggest flaw to smallest

- The bezel isn't aligned.
I know this is fixable, but would need to remove the bezel, the insert, and then get a new sticker ring to align it properly. I don't have proper watchmaker tools, but could ape my way into doing the job.
- Rehaut Alignment. I know this is common on gen, and I've attempted to align it with the dial, which I can do, but the problem is it puts too much pressure on the stem and makes setting the watch very stiff and grindy. If you let the dial fall where the stem is most smooth, combined with the offset bezel, it just looks really bad. The dial 12 triangle, rehaut crown, and bezel triangle are all off alignment.
- Crystal
I have watches that cost $50 that have clearer crystals than this watch. The dial on it is a nice deep black out of the case, but execpt at the perfect angle, it looks gray. The overall readability is pretty poor. Either due to the dial/case misalingment, or the crystal, but the date wheel isn't that centered in the crystal as well.

It got me thinking that while all these problems are fixable, it would take a lot of time, effort, money, and risk to ultimately have a fake watch that now cost closer to $1000 than the $500 I paid for it.

Or just maybe reps arn't for me, and I'm expecting too much out of them, and would be better off letting it go and finding a different watch to be my every day wear watch.

 

[Reaps]

Sell it and buy an ARF if you want the best stock variant with less variation.

It wouldn't cost $500 to fix that, it would cost $100 on your own and $200 with a watch maker.

All of these problems are known issues but without a competent watch maker I don't think you can fix it.

Bezel fix, free if you know how to do some work removing bezel assembly + crystal die- https://forum.replica-watch.info/th...x-the-bezel-on-a-clean-gmt-master-2.10668398/
Deep Crystal - $50
Installation / Labor - probably $50

Rehaut does not look like you can fix it - this is a QC issue. If the date is aligned there's no dial shifting to fix that.

 

[pepperbox]

getting an ARF could be a good idea. I honestly don't care for the 1:1 aspect of it, I really just like the red/blue bezel combo with the overall look of the watch, and while there are a ton of homages and other watches with that color combo, none of them do it for me like the rolex's do.

 

[KJ2020]

I recently picked up my first rep, a Clean GMT Master II

Overall, I like it but for me the watch just has too many minor flaws for me to feel like its worth keeping. The watch looked great in QC, but in person its a bit different.

To prefeace, I've never handled a gen rolex. I didn't buy this

Problems in order from biggest flaw to smallest

- The bezel isn't aligned.
I know this is fixable, but would need to remove the bezel, the insert, and then get a new sticker ring to align it properly. I don't have proper watchmaker tools, but could ape my way into doing the job.
- Rehaut Alignment. I know this is common on gen, and I've attempted to align it with the dial, which I can do, but the problem is it puts too much pressure on the stem and makes setting the watch very stiff and grindy. If you let the dial fall where the stem is most smooth, combined with the offset bezel, it just looks really bad. The dial 12 triangle, rehaut crown, and bezel triangle are all off alignment.
- Crystal
I have watches that cost $50 that have clearer crystals than this watch. The dial on it is a nice deep black out of the case, but execpt at the perfect angle, it looks gray. The overall readability is pretty poor. Either due to the dial/case misalingment, or the crystal, but the date wheel isn't that centered in the crystal as well.

It got me thinking that while all these problems are fixable, it would take a lot of time, effort, money, and risk to ultimately have a fake watch that now cost closer to $1000 than the $500 I paid for it.

Or just maybe reps arn't for me, and I'm expecting too much out of them, and would be better off letting it go and finding a different watch to be my every day wear watch.

How is the date not centered? Level but high/low or appearing on an angle like the one in the pic below?

The pic shows a dial that is seated at the wrong position rotationally on the movement. This can be corrected with some careful minor dremel work on the dial's underside rims which friction fit the dial to the movement and fix it in place rotationally.

Pic of a 126x dial underside (if a 126x GMT dial is gen-spec it won't have dial feet).

If your date is just high or low in the window (and parallel to the date window's horizontal frame borders), rotating the dial on the movement will not help. It will just create an angle off appearance like in the first pic. But it's worth checking to see if that option would help. If it would, rotating the dial would surely also mean rotating the crystal to keep those two elements aligned. If you were going to replace the crystal anyway, no extra work there.

If you decide to sell with all these misalignments, you would have to discount it sufficiently to entice someone to take the project on. If you want to tackle it yourself, you can see some of what's involved in the links below. The bezel and crystal removal and reinstall for a GMT is like doing a Sub, there are just different parts underneath. The GMT parts are shown in the second link for the reinstall. The dremel work on the dial rims involves grinding back the leading edges of several underside rims by an amount needed to allow for the rotation, about 1 - 1.5mm. It can be done in about 15 minutes once the dial is free in hand.

6-digit Sub crystal and bezel swap

6-digit GMT bezel install sequence

 

[pepperbox]

Looking at it a bit more, I think its mostly just the bezel being off center which is making everything else look off.
I'll try to remove, and re-install it using some of those 38mm ring stickers.

 

[KJ2020]

Looking at it a bit more, I think its mostly just the bezel being off center which is making everything else look off.
I'll try to remove, and re-install it using some of those 38mm ring stickers.

You only gave us one pic to look at but using it, the insert triangle appears nicely aligned with the rehaut crown. Before tearing everything apart, I would put the 12 o'clock bracelet half back on and take some more pics. It's another very useful reference point to help align an insert.

I take very close up pics and use grid lines from editing software to make sure my inserts get aligned before committing to a stick or a press fit. Your insert may be more centered than you think.

Reinstall a ceramic insert to a bezel with tape or glue

I originally aligned this bezel to the dial but it looked off center left when I put the bracelet on.

Using photo editing, first I rotated the pic to level using text next to a border edge.

Then use a grid line dead center to evaluate the alignment. You can see the centerline of the dial and bezel is off axis anti-clockwise. Confirmed by referencing the SEL and first bracelet link.

This meteorite dial had been mounted on its metal plate about 1.5° anti-clockwise. I had to grind the feet off, rotate it and epoxy it to the movement.

 

[pepperbox]

You only gave us one pic to look at but using it, the insert triangle appears nicely aligned with the rehaut crown. Before tearing everything apart, I would put the 12 o'clock bracelet half back on and take some more pics. It's another very useful reference point to help align an insert.

I take very close up pics and use grid lines from editing software to make sure my inserts get aligned before committing to a stick or a press fit. Your insert may be more centered than you think.

I know these are not the best photos ever, but to my eye, it seems the rehaut and bezel are close enough to being in line with the bracelet, but the dial is whats crooked.

I've attempted to adjust the movement in the case, which I can get aligned, but the stem is too far off from the crown that it binds pretty badly, so really I'd need to move the dail and datewheel ever so slightly clockwise.

I don't know how complicated that would be, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

The only issue with doing that, is then the cyclops would then be off center, but I think I could live with that, and that too is a solvable issue if I care to replace the crystal.

Over all i'm not trying to make this a perfect rep, I don't really care about that aspect too much, I'd just like to make this $500 watch the best $500 watch it can be.

Its my assumption that during assembly, the bezel is aligned to the rehaut on the case, then they slap the movement in

 

[Karbon74]

It looks to me that the dial is just slightly rotated left by less than 1º or so
Maybe simply the dial feet were soldered a bit off

Try to just nudge the dial a hair clockwise while on the movement without too much force. Don’t rotate the movement because you will mess up the stem alignment

Maybe also try to procure another dial to see.


I would do nothing else

 

[pepperbox]

Sounds good, I'll give it a shot this weekend. Hopefully I can give it just enough of a nudge to get it better aligned.

I still want to do the bezel mod as well, I wouldn't say mine is sloppy, but it does have enough wiggle to make the alignment go from bad to worse.

 

[KJ2020]

Sounds good, I'll give it a shot this weekend. Hopefully I can give it just enough of a nudge to get it better aligned.

I still want to do the bezel mod as well, I wouldn't say mine is sloppy, but it does have enough wiggle to make the alignment go from bad to worse.

Here are a couple of comparison pics.

If you rotate the image so that a perfectly straight vertical grid line bisects the rehaut engraving, the rehaut engraving appears to have been placed 1.4° clockwise onto the rehaut. The grid line bisects the center spire of the rehaut crown, the second hand center pinion, and the middle of the serial number (halfway between the 4th and 5th digits).

From this pic you can see that the insert triangle appears to have bern aligned with the rehaut crown center spire, and the grid line bisects the middle SEL link right of center, confirming the analysis.

If you rotate the image so that a perfectly straight vertical grid line bisects the dial's 60 minute tic, the second hand center pinion, and the middle of the lower coronet, the dial (and movement) appear to be set into the case 0.8° anti-clockwise. The grid line bisects the middle SEL link left of center, confirming the analysis.

Both relevant parts of the images together.

So unfortunately the two most important elements (the dial and the insert triangle) are off center in opposite directions. You can do nothing to improve the rehaut crown position so let's talk about the other two elements.

As I mentioned in a previous post above, since CLEAN uses the DD3285 (which has no dial feet holes), in order to be able to rotate the dial on the movement you would need to grind off the leading edges of several of the dial's underside rims. But look at your date window. The top bar of the 5 is perfectly parallel to the top edge of the date window. If you rotate the dial on the movement you will induce an angle off DW appearance like in the Blueberry meteorite pictured above. Also you will throw off the cyclops alignment as you mentioned.

That leaves only the insert as a potential aesthetic improvement if moved. From a wrist distance away the insert triangle and the dial relationship are much more visible than either of those with the rehaut crown.

If this was mine to live with, I would test some results (with pics) of moving the insert triangle at least 1 - 1.5° anti-clockwise and surely that will improve the overall appearance. I would not move the insert triangle to align with the dial as that will just make everything off center in the same direction. In cases like this "splitting the difference" and forgetting about the rehaut crown is the best option.

I would not mess with the dial at all since that means removing the hands. Have you ever removed and replaced hands? It's a sure way to scratch the dial or bend the hands if you are not experienced. And it's a 4 hand stack to boot. Not always a slam dunk simple task even for experienced hobbyists. Also an attempt to rotate the dial is one step forward and 2 steps back - the date window becomes misaligned with the DW and the cyclops. All that work for a tiny benefit, assuming the work is done without mishap.

 

[pepperbox]

This is all great info, thank you.

I may just have to see if I can find a modder who can fix this up best he can.