| Author |
Message |
    
Michael_qrt
Tinkerer
Username: Michael_qrt
Post Number: 1
Registered: 02-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 08, 2011 - 04:45 am: | 
|
Hey all, I recently picked up an Oly 35 rd with a sticky shutter as a bit of a 'project' camera. Anyway, I'd seen Henry's tutorial for shutter cleaning and thought I'd give it a go. The front cell is extreemly tight. I thought I'd be clever about it and over the past few weeks I've been dabbing a bit of penetrating oil behind the retaining ring every few days. So far I havn't had any luck; I nearly destroyed my lens spanner and have marred the aluminium ring containing the front cell. I don't care too much about the cosmetics, the camera was already looking a bit beat up (thought the lens is in good condition), but I do need to get the front cell off. Henry mentions that he had to use the 'hammer and drift' method to remove the front cell. I don't know what a drift is but I'm guessing that it's something to stick in what's left of the slots in the retaining ring and hammer to try to loosen the ring. Is this the right picture? I'm thinking I could stick the camera in a vise, get a flat blade screwdriver and put it in one of the slots and hammer away. Am I on the right track? This seems like a fast way to camera destruction but I'm out of other ideas to remove that front cell.
As a possible alternate method to clean the shutter, is it possible to access and clean the shutter unit from the back by removing the lens unit from the camera body? Any advise would be appreciated.
Michael |
Br1078lum
Tinkerer
Username: Br1078lum
Post Number: 53
Registered: 11-2010
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 08, 2011 - 09:14 am: |
|
You figured out the 'Hammer and Drift' correctly. This is an extreme method though, and you risk scratching the lens if the drift slips, so cover it with a couple of layers of painters blue tape. And you will most likely damage the ring too, so it is advisable to have spare parts before attempting this. Strike it on one side, and then the other to give it a more balanced force. Work your way up in force, not all out in the start. You would be surprised at how little force it takes sometimes to break things loose. Just the shock from a small blow might do it.
PF |
Scott
Tinkerer
Username: Scott
Post Number: 127
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, February 08, 2011 - 06:01 pm: |
|
Those rings are usually aluminum or some other soft metal, so if you put too much force on them, they will begin to distort. Once they distort, it can be nearly impossible to get them out intact.
One way I have seen (but never tried myself) is to use a drill press to drill two holes into a ring. But that works only on the wider sorts of rings, not the thin kind.
Getting the rear lens group out from the back is possible on many RFs, even some of the RFs with faster lenses. Unscrew the group and see if you can manuever it out with forceps or tweezers. |
Paul_ron
Tinkerer
Username: Paul_ron
Post Number: 240
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 - 06:47 am: |
|
Before beating the puss ouda that thing, I'd opt for drilling 2 holes and use a spanner. Also if you put it in a freezer n chill it good, they sometimes break out farily easy.
The hammer n drift will cause much to much vibration, it'll damage the shutter n delicate parts inside.
Some cameras don't want to be fixed and are just as happy on a mantle. |
Michael_qrt
Tinkerer
Username: Michael_qrt
Post Number: 2
Registered: 02-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 - 07:17 am: |
|
Thanks for the advice all. I think I'll lay off the hammer for a few more days yet. I'll try the freezer method, then if that doesn't work I think I'll also try heating it overnight under and incandescent lamp. I might also try removing the whole lens/front plate assembly from the body to see if I can access the shutter from the rear. I think I need to remove the front plate anyway to fix the wire from the battery compartment, which is corroded.
Ultimately, if it doesn't want to be fixed then I'll have probably made sure it's properly broken in finding out. I'll post an update either way, wish me luck.
Michael |
Br1078lum
Tinkerer
Username: Br1078lum
Post Number: 54
Registered: 11-2010
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 - 09:49 am: |
|
All the luck to you Michael. At least this is a project camera, and not a cherished heirloom, so it can be a parts donor later if things don't work out. And hammering on a camera is the last resort.
PF |
Barnum
Tinkerer
Username: Barnum
Post Number: 195
Registered: 10-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 - 12:16 pm: |
|
Hammering is a last resort, but as Confucius say, "If rape is inevitable, lay back and enjoy it!" One method I have used with success is a suitable instrument screwdriver & a small pair of wire cutter/pliers used as a hammer. With the blade located firmly in the slot, tap. I do mean TAP. A series of light blows has shifted a number of stubborn rings with little damage to the slot. |
Monolith
Tinkerer
Username: Monolith
Post Number: 10
Registered: 01-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 11:26 am: |
|
Hi Michael,
I did this only three weeks ago with some help from this forum, and was lucky with the front cell retaining ring, it needed no force. But on onother occasion i successfully used a hammer and a screwdriver, often a really tiny little blow will do. By the way, i hope you are planning to not hammer straight down on it, but in the right direction to unscrew it-just cause you wrote something like "hammer away to loosen it...
To minimise the force on the camera, ask someone to hold it in his hands while you hammer, instead of putting it on a hard surface. if you try this very gently and have a bit of a feeling for it, I see no problems there.
If I remember right, you have to both open the lens from the front and take the front plate off the body. I can't see how Hery Taber manages to get to the shutter by only opening the lens from front.
This is the thread in which I reported and got help from the forum, if it is useful for you: https://kyp.hauslendale.com/classics/forum/messages/2/20811.html?1296847402
regards
Johannes |
Michael_qrt
Tinkerer
Username: Michael_qrt
Post Number: 3
Registered: 02-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2011 - 06:14 am: |
|
Well. I got the front cell off... and I don't think I've broken or lost anything. Let's just say I hope I don't have to do anything like that again anytime soon. I ended up having to use a different method, as hammering away still didn't cause the front cell to budge.
I started a set of wire cutters, tapping away on a small flat blade screwdriver in the slots, alternating every couple of blows. I kept increasing the force gradually but nothing was happeneing so I got out a real hammer and kept increasing the force till I had to stop. It just wasn't working, the slots were mangled, hitting harder was only going to end in disaster.
I thought if I could somehow remove the shutter unit from the body with the front cell still attached I could apply more leverage. I manager to do this by removing the three screws holding the shutter unit in, as pointed out in Henry's tutorial. Of course I wasn't able to remove the ring that links the focus and aperture in flash mode, and this blocks one of the screws. I removed what Henry calls the 'shoulder screw' on this ring and was able to push it out of the way enough to access the screw. Then I removed the front plate from the body and also removed the shutter 'clockwork' from the lens unit to be able to wiggle free the shutter housing. Now with the shutter housing removed I could get much better access to the ring holding the front cell.
The method I finally employed was to set the shutter housing in a vise and use some pliers/grippers to grip the front cell. I initially tried padding the ring with some pieces of rubber as the grippers have some pretty aggressive teeth but it all kept slipping. After abandoning the rubber and accepting that the ring will get heavily marred I was having trouble with the shutter unit housing slipping in the vise. Finally I aligned some of the notches in the shutter housing with the vise surfaces and cranked the vise down as tightly as I could and was able to get the front cell loose. The grippers I was using have 25cm (10 inch) long handles and I was applying really a lot of force to them. I almost couldn't believe it when it moved.
Now the challenge is to clean out the shutter blades and turn this pile of parts in front of me back into a camera. |
Michael_qrt
Tinkerer
Username: Michael_qrt
Post Number: 4
Registered: 02-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2011 - 07:03 am: |
|
OK, so I cleaned the shutter and aperture blades and put it all back together (not without a few mistakes of course). Anyway, it works, shutter speeds sound accurate, metering works, the rangefinder looks accurate compared to the distance markings on the focus ring (which I never had to remove). I'm quite amazed, I must admit, to have a camera again, considering the pile of parts it was in.
OK, so it works but there are a few problems. Firstly the aperture ring is most of the time very hard to move and occasionally it goes back to being as it was before my repair. Has anyone had a similar problem? I guess I'll have to open her up again and have a look. Unfortunately I'll have to go most of the way back in to get to the aperture ring.
The other problem is that the metering seems inconsistent, even when holding the camera still and half pressing the shutter release I might get readings of lock, 2.8, lock, 2, 2.8, lock, for example (lock is where the camera thinks there isn't enough light and locks the shutter. Once again, has anyone else had similar problems? Any ideas?
Just for fun I'll list some of the mistakes I made in reassembling the camera; maybe it'll save some others from wasting a bit of time.
-Put the shutter blades back in the wrong way around. I found out when I put it back together and had a shutter that would be open then close for a fraction of a second when released.
-Put the shutter blades on the right way around but in the wrong order, so they wouldn't close properly.
-Reopened the correctly assembled aperture unit to check and dropped everything everywhere.
-Forgot to rehook the aperture spring after reassembling the shutter unit the second time.
-Forgot to reinstall the rod that couples the rangefinder to the focus helicoid. |
Dirbel
Tinkerer
Username: Dirbel
Post Number: 48
Registered: 04-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2011 - 01:41 pm: |
|
Regarding metering: My 35RD and 35RC show the same behaviour. Pressing the shutter release _really_ slow helps a bit.
I guess the mechanism that controls the aperture setting isn't very accurate at wide apertures.
Dirk |
Michael_qrt
Tinkerer
Username: Michael_qrt
Post Number: 5
Registered: 02-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2011 - 03:45 pm: |
|
Hi Dirk, thanks for sharing your experience. I also have an 35RC and the metering on that camera seems rock solid. My 35RC is in really excellent condition though, whereas the RD looks like it has had a hard life, and then I was banging around inside it. Pressing the release really slow does help somewhat.
I just tested them side by side and my RC does indeed seem to have solid metering, even if you press the release fairly fast. Sometimes it'll alternate between two adjacent apertures, I guess this indicates an in between value. The RD isn't that bad if you press the release slowly but does sometimes seem less consistent. As you found, it seemed more of a problem at the wider apertures; where it might go something like 1.7, 2.8, 2, 2, 2.8. Of course the wider apertures is where I'd like to use the RD, so while it's useable I was just trying to see if it could be improved.
I guess the real test now is to run a roll through it. That should highlight any problems. |
Juliard1
Tinkerer
Username: Juliard1
Post Number: 22
Registered: 04-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 - 03:10 pm: |
|
Wow .. you guys sure go all out to get something loose. The Japanese almost always use a clear lacquer to lock retaining rings and so on. Next time use a magnifying glass to locate the lacquer and paint some thinners on to dissolve it. It worked on all the 35RC's I ever worked on. |
Rick_oleson
Tinkerer
Username: Rick_oleson
Post Number: 1122
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 - 09:12 pm: |
|
hammers are more fun  = |
Michael_qrt
Tinkerer
Username: Michael_qrt
Post Number: 7
Registered: 02-2011
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, February 21, 2011 - 03:53 am: |
|
Juliard1, When you try to remove the front element you can't get in to see the threads, although I suppose I could have done this after I removed the whole front element/shutter unit. At that stage I had already been hammering a lot (I didn't know it was possible to get the shutter unit out without removing the front cell before I was forced to try).
If I had to do it again I'd probably go straight to removing the shutter unit with front cell attached and try to dissolve the threadlocking compound. Though even in this case the threads are still kind of hidden.
Anyway, I have a working camera now so I'm happy. I'll post a before and after shot and a sample or two when I get the chance. |
|
