| Author | Message | ||
     Scott Tinkerer Username: Scott Post Number: 26 Registered: 07-2006 Rating: N/A |
Glad to see that you're getting so much good avdice here, Krafty. I have fixed and use a couple of Tower 18B cameras, and they are pretty well-made, and have nice lenses. One glitch that both of them had (which happens on all makes of leaf shutter cameras) is that the shutters often stuck shut. When I pressed the shutter release, the leaves sort of twitch slightly, but that's all. Of course, the problem is that there's too much friction either on the blades themselves, or the actuating rings. Oil, or dirt, or both are the cause of the friction, so I swabbed the blades clean and it worked fine for a while, but then it went back to sticking again sometime later. If the shutter leaves appear to be opening and closing crisply but the slower speeds (1/30 and slower) still sound too slow, then there's probably too much friction in the slow-speed escapement mechanism. With the cam-plate off of the shutter, you can easily see where it is. 3-4 drops of naptha (lighter fluid) in the right place will speed things up considerably. The springs that operate the shutter and aperture blades are too weak to overcome any friction caused by even traces of oil. Go ahead and smear a bit of synthetic grease on advance linkages, spindles, gears, rangefinder mechanisms, etc., just keep the grease and oil away from the actual shutter and aperture leaves, gears, escapements, etc. A bus mechanic, eh? My grandpa was a bus mechanic. He was in charge of school bus maintennance in Odessa, Texas from the late 50s to the late 60s. When I was a little kid, he would let me climb down into the pit and and he'd show me all the tools and such. To this day, the smell of a dirty, greasy garage with gasoline, gear oil and welding fumes is still a very familiar and comforting aroma  |