FC6405 FT6046
I've learned quite a lot about watches over the last few years, well... TAG Heuer watches certainly, and one of the things I've learned is that you should never 'assume' anything. For some reason known only to themselves, watch companies, well... TAG Heuer certainly, sometimes seem hell bent on making things unnecessarily difficult for the consumer. I don't think they do it on purpose, I think it's an unfortunate side effect of trying to make things more 'integrated', but sometimes it's genuinely hard to follow the logic.
I really like the Aquaracer and I really like that TAG Heuer make rubber straps which fit in and fill up the entire lug space. But there are so many variations of the Aquaracer case that it's not that easy to know which rubber strap fits which case, and because the rubber straps fill up the lug space there's no room for error.
If you favour a classic Carrera the world is your oyster for straps, there are a multitude of options to suit every pocket and all you really need to know is the measurement between the lugs. But recently the trend has been towards 'bespoke' fitting straps, which is great for the manufacturer of course as it encourages continued strap sales. But even here there are pitfalls for the unwary, if I see a cool looking strap on a new Carrera will it fit my original Heuer 01? Probably not.
Which brings us to the thrust of this post, you may remember that last year I wrote a post about buying a watch on behalf of and sending it to Jim Dollares in Sweden. Jim wanted to take advantage of the 50% discounts being offered at Bicester Village on the last remaining Heuer 01s and as we had been chatting for a while he felt he could trust me with his money and transferred it to my bank account.
I had a good deal of 'fun' sorting that deal out and getting the watch to him, with DHL proving to be the best and pretty much only option in the end. Here's a tip, if you ever plan to send an expensive watch abroad make sure you definitely have a means of getting it there before you buy it - the Post Office really let me down.
Before Jim settled on the titanium Carrera on a rubber strap, he was toying with the idea of taking the 'brown' skeleton Carrera on a brown leather strap, indeed he very nearly bought that one but changed his mind at the last minute. So after he'd had the watch a little while he went to his A.D. to enquire about getting the brown strap for his Carrera and was quoted some absolutely ridiculous figure, so I said I would see if I could find out what the price was here as posting that to Sweden wouldn't be as big a deal or as costly as sending a £4000 watch.
The price I got was considerably better, and the strap was ordered, collected and sent. Happy days, done and dusted... or so I thought.
It was fair to assume, for all concerned (and I am including the ADs in this), that the brown strap would fit the titanium Carrera. After all, the models came out at the same time, they had the same case, the only difference with the titanium model was the material of manufacture... right?
Wrong. Unfortunately the position of the spring bar holes in the lugs is different on the Titanium model. It's actually further out on the lug compared to the steel. This means that when you fit the brown strap to the titanium Carrera it leaves a small, but noticeable gap between the lug end (which is actually glued to the strap) and the case.
On the bottom we see the original rubber strap and on top the brown leather version.
Notice the different positions of the spring bars relative to the strap shoulder.
Looking at this we can see that the end piece design is different on the two straps,
on the rubber strap the end piece is a separate part that is held in place by the spring
bar itself, but that doesn't really explain why it's necessary to reposition the spring bar
holes and in the process limit the titanium model to just one strap
Admittedly the gap is probably not that noticeable after a while, but I think it
would annoy me enough that I would definitely end up trying a D.I.Y. fix!
Jim could have asked to send the strap back, but he didn't have an alternative - there is no 'brown' strap for the titanium Carrera (only a titanium bracelet) so he decided to keep it and live with the gaps. I did suggest that he could try making another hole further down the strap and resolving the issue that way, but he wasn't keen on the idea - which I can understand, it sounds like the kind of thing I would attempt and probably end up regretting!
And it seems that it's not just the titanium Carrera that has this issue, in fact the steel CAR201Z above uses the same rubber strap and as such will have the same problem. So it seems if you want a 43mm Heuer 01 Carrera you have to choose between a leather strap or a bracelet with no possibility to fit a rubber strap, and a rubber strap and a bracelet (but not the same bracelet) with the option of a badly fitting leather strap. Wouldn't it have been better if you could fit all three options to any 43mm steel Carrera? I don't see why they couldn't have made the two interchangeable really
Like I said, I'm not sure it's some kind of nefarious plot on TAG Heuer's part, but it's something that could have been addressed and resolved at the design stage - as it is you probably won't even realise you are locked in to one or other strap choice until the time comes when you decide you'd like a change.
So the moral of the story is, don't buy any straps unless you are 100% sure they fit, and maybe buy from your local AD so that when they don't end up fitting, it's their problem not yours. Alternatively just buy a basic Carrera with a 20mm lug width and you'll be spoilt for choice!
With thanks to Jim Dollares for the excellent photographs!
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