OK peeps, I got my white ZF back from my watchmaker. I had a spare swiss eta 2824 to hand, so I set him a challenge to swap in the swiss movement, but keep the black parts and fake deco plate, yes I know WHY? I like a swiss engine in all my reps, its just an old habit. He said it was a bit of a challenge but turned out well. What has gone due to the movement swap is the little etched omega logo on the bottom of the movement, it now shows an eta stamp, but i don't mind that. Now it winds better, date clicks over better and hands have less wobble.
I also ordered a rep and OEM rubber band to compare. I picked up the black OEM from omega, it was around £220 and the rep was £18 big difference! This is known to be the best rubber version and even came with a nice set of spare spring bars, curved and straight to ensure you could get it to fit.
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I recall I had to use curved spring bars on the VS case for the old VS rep rubber to fit (Ive since sold it) . With the ZF, the original straight spring bars were fine. OMEGA told me that this rubber strap is only supplied with straight bars, and only the nato straps come with curved ones.
The rubber on the rep strap is a little softer and the raised sections on the underside are higher than the OEM strap, visually its VERY close, but there is a difference in both feel and pin buckle. Was it worth another £200? No.... The pin buckle on its own is £45, so I would say, rep rubber and OEM pin buckle is the way to go if you want to save some money.
Onto the watches.
My grey dial came with the piss-yellow lume, I bought another dial from VSF many months later that was supposed to be better, but it looked identical to me. I found a modder in Italy who had good feedback for relume work so sent the watch to him to relume both dial and hands.
Once it came back it has been sitting in my watch box for a few months. I was very alarmed when I went to compare the new ZF and to take some pics for you chaps, as the hour hand has lost the blue colour - I cannot explain what happened, I presume damage from whatever the guy used to strip the lume from the hands, but I got a new set of hands on the way from trusty ($50) to resolve, more expense, don't you just love this hobby.
Was I happy with the manual lume job, from the wrist it's fine, but close-up pics like this, make it looks pretty bad (no need to remind me and make me feel shitty, thanks) but hey, it's white ;-) and it really is not that bad on the wrist.
The bezel on the VSF is better on my example. The ZF has a little play when you push down on it. The "click" action to me is the same.
Getting a decent model with indices that are straight/aligned is the big issue with this model from all factories, and neither are perfect, but I got tired of rejecting QC.
I have not unwrapped the ZF bracelet as I planned to have the white on the rubber. Note the clasp on the VSF band is OEM. I am surprised not more members swap these with the OEM part, it only cost about £100 and the fit and finish is much higher, no more sharp edges!
In terms of AR, the VRF is slightly better.
I would lastly add, that if any member does have access to OEM dials or hands, please get in touch.
Onto pics:
www.intime06.co
