This is an interesting story, more than a year ago, I was browsing eBay, and saw a listing for an 1163GMT on the GF bracelet and perfectly dated accordingly, it was priced well below its value and pictures weren't great. Another interesting fact about it is that the original owner flew with it in Vietnam so maybe this "Maverick" experienced some air-to-air action in the blue skies of the Vietnam war. The listing had a buy it now and I just knew I had to take the risk, it is the model that came with the red sub-dial hands and usually have the dials that go tropical to give the effect of a chocolate color. When I received it I was amazed that the watch was in descent condition minus the crystal (luckily, I had a NOS spare lying around), the GMT hand and sweeping hand were completely faded, the color practically gone, and pushers were stuck and one was kind of damaged, the bezel had oxidation but it was ok (although I prefer it to look nicer). I contacted our UK friend Stewart Morley and asked the dimensions for an 1163 bezel as I didn't have the tools to do it myself at that time. Stewart, was kind enough to provide those measurements to me and I think James Hyman may have played a role in this also, I forget lol. I took the measurements and asked the ebay seller which sold Autavia aftermarket bezels if they could manufacture a GMT bezel to my specification, it took months of constant email reminders to them until one day, they listed a new product on their page, well what do you know it's an 1163 GMT bezel built in the specification that I requested. I buy one and to my surprise it looked really good. I sent this to Abel at a later point in time.

I sent Maverick to our friend Abel Court as I was also sending him another watch (11063V, see picture below) for some minor work so I figure just send it over.

Well time passed and I was in no rush at all to see these come back as Abel asked me to be patient and I was, I knew Abel was very busy, and it took him a long time to get to my work order, but trust me when I say the wait was extremely well worth it I mean it. Along the way, Abel joked about things like my son likes playing with your watches, and an old blue box that became stranded, perhaps trying to induce a seizure or heart attack at me... lol.

Abel, took this thing completely apart and worked that Belgian magic we're so used to knowing. When I asked him questions like can you make the bezel click again? He responded, "I will make it click and tick ;-)"

All credit goes to Abel for the before and transformation photos, as for the rest, they're just from me taken with my Samsung Galaxy S5.

Before the work:

And the transformation, the aftermarket bezel was good, so good Abel said the blue is too bright but it's good enough, I bet if it was shade lighter we would have a really nice looking aftermarket bezel:

Oh and I can't help but wonder but this GMT gives off a dark chocolate effect it's never completely went tropical but in the sunlight I think it's more than sufficient to see what I mean. When I first got the watch I thought my eyes could have been deceiving me, I also consulted with Richard Crosthwaite about it and we could not conclude if it is the tropical dial or not but let's hear it, in all its glory it's still a beautiful piece: