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Johnnyh
Tinkerer
Username: Johnnyh
Post Number: 1
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 27, 2009 - 10:19 am: | 
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Hi, I'm a 'newbie' to this forum who's just acquired an early model (barn doors, no accessory shoe) Voigtlander Vitessa. All seemed reasonably well for the age until I put in a 'dummy'(blank exposed) film cassette which I use for exercising the mechanisms of newly acquired cameras. The wind-release button fails to disengage the wind mechanism - I had to cut the film to be able to remove it.
It looks as if, on dismantling, I am likely to be confronted by a cascade of flying springs, bearings, cams, whatever...
Are there any kind readers of this forum who have had experience of tackling this fault ?
PS apologies if I missed an existing post in the forum. (It's not the same problem as Mrvoigtlander's post June 13, 2009 - 07:12 pm, and there is some advice applicable to the Vitessa-T but I'm not sure to what extent this is applicable to my model - certainly the access at the front is different ...). |
Johnnyh
Tinkerer
Username: Johnnyh
Post Number: 4
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 07:49 am: |
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So, I held the camera securely in a tiltable,table-top, vice with soft jaws and carefully removed the baseplate. It was evident that work had previously been attempted; the return spring for the shutter-release button was off its shaft at one end and bent, and the slot in the idler gear retaining screw was a bit 'chewed-up'.
Examination of the winder/wind-release mechanism showed that its correct operation depends on closely-toleranced items that were, of course, probably never expected to maintain their accuracy after the wear of over 50 years. Ah well, what else should I expect, with such an attractively-specified but 'highly-strung design' classic.
It was not possible to see the exact relative positions of the assembled parts, as the wind-release button is on a small blade spring that is mounted on the inside face of the baseplate, and is therefore concealed when assembled. The free end of this blade spring is supposed to press down a gear that slides, against a spring, on the winder shaft so that it becomes free of a driving peg to release the mechanism for rewinding the film.
[ By the way, I got the "Repair Manual" for the "Voigtlaender Vitessa (Barndoor)" from http://www.oldtimercameras.com . The 'exploded' component assembly diagrams in this are for the Types 133 and 134 Vitessa (mine is the earlier Type 125). These Type 133/134 diagrams show that Voigtlander had recognised the weaknesses of the earlier design, and modified it such that the wind-release button operates directly on the sliding gear, instead of via a spring blade.]
I found that it was possible to make a very small 'swivel' movement of the spring blade, about its mounting rivet, so that it engaged slightly better with the sliding gear.
The operation of the winder, and wind-release, was now at least more consistent when there was no film in the camera. With a film loaded, the extra mechanical load shows up the 'slop' in the mechanism, so that sometimes operation of the winder plunger fails to advance the film.
Now to see how the camera performs with a film in it. The 2.0 Ultron looks a most impressive piece of glass ... |
Johnnyh
Tinkerer
Username: Johnnyh
Post Number: 5
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 08:21 am: |
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Continued just for the record:-
The results of the first film confirmed the Ultron to be a nice, crisp, lens as expected by reputation, and the shutter and rangefinder work satisfactorily.
Winding-on between exposures required careful observation of the exposure counter to confirm success when multiple attempts with the plunger were necessary (it was usually possible to tell by the mechanical 'feel' as well).
Also, it was 'fiddly' to keep the wind mechanism released when re-winding the exposed film.
This camera will never be a 'mint' specimen, and the over-all wear to the fragile design would make it pointless and prohibitively expensive to have it serviced professionally, so I will try to fettle it a bit myself to be a bit more usable ... This is turning into a "How-To/How-not-To" ;-)
... So I drilled out the rivet holding the wind-release mechanism spring blade, and filed the hole in which the button on the blade sits to allow a little more travel in the selection of the 'swivel' position of the blade.
This did not noticeably improve matters, so I then drilled a new hole in the baseplate (and the corresponding position in the base of the camera back-cover), close to the spring-loaded gear which has to be pressed down for release of the wind-mechanism. This hole, which is close to the position of the 'properly-engineered' button system of the later models, allows 'last-resort' direct access from outside the camera for pushing down the gear.
The spring blade was re-mounted on the baseplate with a 12BA steel cheese-head set-screw and nut (secured by cropping off the excess screw shank and peening it over on to the nut). |
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