Moon watch only says 809 but Chuck Maddox says 808 and he was nearer to the production date indeed he was treating the 809 as some kind of replacement and advising his forum members to swap but was there two iterations at 2 different times or was it 808 in 1987 and 809 1988 Help much appreciated Thanks in anticipation Have posted pictures to assist
Personally, 809 based purely on my own observations. It makes sense to me because they are slightly taller than 808 and match the taller 376.0822 case better than the 808s.
Actually the height is misleading because the wings underneath are thicker so it sits the endlinks lower its the photo on the right I was thinking 809 but have seen a lot of 808 and why would that be ? And we musnt forget Chuck and his pals on chronocentric who all went 808 But thanks anyway
Interestingly Cuck Maddox thought the reverse Of course on the Watches coeval to the grail it was always the 808 345.0809 or the 345.0808 so it make sense to imagine that the 808 came first ....but service replacement? How many times does an endlinks get replaced at service ....virtually never particularly a solid end link So was it the case that this model had two end links I certainly have seen both and the 1479 with the 812 appears to be a rare but occasional variation....Alberto Isnardi claims it in Master of Omega For a small 1500 production run Omega were certainly inconsistent
having just gone through my parts bin, i happened across a pair of 809's and though of this thread. I spent a little time hunting around on the Internet for further information. One observation that may be relevant is that 808 endlinks were available as recently as last year from various parts suppliers. I can't say I've ever seen a pair of 809 ends on their own available for sale. anyway, just wondering if the broader availability of the 808s might be a lead in whether or not they were targeted at a wider range of speedies - 145.022 variety in particular - thereby leaving 809s (the more rare) to the 376.0822.
I think you are probably right, the early 376.0822 seem to have the 808 s along with the 1987 et al speedies but the later versions seem to go with the 809 ....of course it could be the other way round but as mentioned in a previous note Chuck Maddox and his cohorts used to change the 809 for the 808 as they thought that was the correct way round I have looked at contemporary catalogues but they are no help and the extracts don’t specifically mention the end links as far as I have seen
In case anyone cares the 808 is 0.15mm wider than the 809. Today I was trying to put a1450 on my Gemini and realized the 808 is too wide for the Gemini and only the 809 will fit. Luckily I had both end links to make the comparison. This is the end result