Stiff focus on Super Ikonta 531/2 - anyone fixed one?

Muggins

Muggins

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Oooh, my first venture into the new RFF... exciting!

I have been given a Super Ikonta 531/2 - obviously well used, and in need of TLC (I could get a decent fry-up from the fungus!) with an f3.5 Tessar in a Synchro-Compur with speeds to 1/500. I do have lens wrenches etc, and I reckon I can get in to clean the two parts of the lens (two elements in front of and two behind the shutter, I think? Front element focussing). However the job that concerns me is the focus - it's very stiff both when I turn the rangefinder wheel and if I turn the knurled ring round the lens. The latter looks supiciously as though it's taken a knock at some point - it's definitely got a bend that I doubt it left the factory with.

I have a nasty feeling I've read somewhere that aligning the prisms is one of those jobs that scars you mentally for life. Has anyone done a similar job who could offer advice, please?

Many thanks,

Adrian
 
Adrian, Sorry to hear of this setback from being able to get out with this new toy! I love these cameras and would send without hesitation to Jurgen Kreckel. He has cured issues I have had with several older folder cameras over the years and he is very reasonable. His website is Certo 6 (like the camera).

Best of luck to you,
David
 
Muggins said:
I have a nasty feeling I've read somewhere that aligning the prisms is one of those jobs that scars you mentally for life. Has anyone done a similar job who could offer advice, please?
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Yeah, if you actually take the two rotating prisms out, you're in for an hour of fun trying to re-align them and match them to the focus gear timings properly. Don't ask me how I know.

Least invasive thing you can try is apply a little sewing machine oil in the focusing helical of the lens with a needle.
You can also safely take the front cover off the shutter and apply a bit of oil to the linkage gears between the lens and the RF-prism.
 
Thank you for the suggestions, everyone. Looking at my net income, relative to my gross habits, this month I think it might be DIY very carefully first - being in the UK it's now markedly more expensive to do anything involving Europe (eg Jurgen), and not cheap to send to the US, but if the fix isn't simple...

Mr Flibble, hoping to be in Nijmegen in the spring, plague allowing...
 
Thanks for putting me right, John, obviously I misinterpreted a reference on a page somewhere!
(sidles off to find an atlas)
 
Muggins said:
Thank you for the suggestions, everyone. Looking at my net income, relative to my gross habits, this month I think it might be DIY very carefully first - being in the UK it's now markedly more expensive to do anything involving Europe (eg Jurgen), and not cheap to send to the US, but if the fix isn't simple...

Mr Flibble, hoping to be in Nijmegen in the spring, plague allowing...
Click to expand...

I just took my Super Ikonta C apart a few weeks ago. You don't need to disassemble the rangefinder prisms to get access to the gears. Unfortunately, I didn't know that, but the recoupling was not that terrible, just took some time. Also, it appeared to me that it's not enough just to adjust one of the prisms. To avoid this issue, there are two screws on the back of the rangefinder arm. One is holding the metal housing, the other keeps the the frame in place that holds the prisms, covered by the housing. If you just remove the housing, you can lubricate the gears without having to disassemble the prisms. From the front if you take the knob and the metal housing off, you'll get access to the gears. But don't use too much oil! I think dry lube could be better sprayed in a cup and carefully applied with a needle or toothpick.
Though the hardest part of this process is unscrewing the screws. Sometimes they are really tight. Be careful not to damage the heads! I had to give mine to a watchmaker, for I could not remove two little screws. On my Super Ikonta D the housing screw on the back of the arm is stuck. I can't make it twist at all, though it could use some lubrication as the focusing is stiff.
 
Pcsaba said:
I just took my Super Ikonta C apart a few weeks ago. You don't need to disassemble the rangefinder prisms to get access to the gears.
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Yes, that is true. I did a service on a similar rangefinder swivel arm on a ZI SI 531. One of the 2 holes of its cover is larger and enables you to replace the original screw with one with a smaller head. Then the underlying plate is secured and you can remove the other original screw and the cover.


Super Ikonta A 531 Reaching for the Shutter (15) by Hans Kerensky, on Flickr


Super Ikonta A 531 Reaching for the Shutter (16) by Hans Kerensky, on Flickr
 
That's a stroke of luck - I haven't logged in for a while, and I just spotted the notifications tag. Thank you, gentlemen - advice much appreciated! I've got no further than removing the bezel (definitely bent, but with no effect on the stiffness, so I'm hoping it's something dry) so far, so this takes me a lot further.
 
Muggins said:
That's a stroke of luck - I haven't logged in for a while, and I just spotted the notifications tag. Thank you, gentlemen - advice much appreciated! I've got no forther than removing the bezel (definitely bent, but with no effect on the stiffness, so I'm hoping it's something dry) so far, so this takes me a lot further.
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Just do not soak it with oil! If a little doesn't help, more won't neither. Just saying, because I've fixed some lenses flooded with oil.
 
So you don't think a bit of SAE30 will help then? :)

I do appreciate the thought, though - I didn't quite discover the hard way about oil, but I have had one or two twitchy hand moments with oil and the lighter fluid can that have taken more sortinng than I planned!
 
Well, I've been into it (thanks to a video) on youbend I found - and another one on the Ikonta I've just done from our own Chris Sherlock) - looks as though I'm not the first one, judging by the carefully hand-cut cardboard shim I found! However the lens assembly is now a mushroom-free zone, and the stiff focus... well, I don't know what it was! I can only assume that the cover over the lens assembly was not screwed down evenly - it now runs smoothly. Now I need to get it back together and try to set my infinity focus, which is always a bit tedious, but I'm not going to do that this evening now as I had a beer with my supper.

It's a dangerous game... now I know I can remove shutters from bellows, I'm going to dig out the bellows that FallisPhoto gave me a decade or so ago, and see if I can resuscitate an art deco Kodak 620 with them, it's not worth spending money on, but it's pretty enough to be worth spending time on.
 
Bother! I knew it was too good to be true... Although I can set infinity focus I'm damned if I can set the RF at the same time, I thought I was bring smart by not tinkering with the arm, but obviously not... I can't get my head round quite what I'm meant to do to get it right - at the moment if I set one end of the range, to get to the other end the split image moves past the point of coincidence and back again, which I don't understand at all. Any ideas?
 
An interesting aside - there's one screw holding the cover on that screws into one of the cogs of the RF mech that's really quite awkward to get straight on the Ikonta - on my Moskva there's a little cut-out that makes it fit much more snugly.
 
Muggins said:
Bother! I knew it was too good to be true... Although I can set inifinity focus I'm damned if I can set the RF at the same time, I thought I was bring smart by not tinkering with the arm, but obviously not... I can't get my head round quite what I'm meant to do to get it right - at the moment if I set one end of the range, to get to the other end the split image moves past the point of coincidence and back again, which I don't understand at all. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

You need to set the RF for coincidence first - with the lens out - also there's two points of coincidence across the movement range of the gears - but only one is correct. The other will cause the image to "walk" backwards.

Then after setting the RF arm coincidence correctly at infinity. Mark all the gear positions with a sharpie or something else non permanent that you can remove later on. Then set the front lens back in and move it to infinity focus as well. Now reset the gears to the positions you marked out earlier and make sure that the mechanism meshes correctly.

It's a bit fiddly but it's not rocket science, unless you lose the positioning between the two prism gears. In which case poor poor you... (been there done that - it's not the end of the world - just very.... very time consuming)
 
Thanks - that's good, I thought I was losing it when the image started to go backwards. I assume it's to do with the physics of rotating prisms, but I was getting tired. I'll have a go later and see how I get on - I can see this might take a couple of tries! The thing has obviously been well-used over a very long time, and been taken apart more than once, and it's not so much got Zeiss bumps as Zeiss smallpox, but the shutter is smooth as a baby's bottom still and I really want to get the old warrior fighting again!

Lady luck seems to be with me - I managed to drop the focus ring, dislodging one of the grub screws, *but I found the thing* on the floor - all 2mm of it!

I think marking the wrong coincidence first will probably be sensible, if I can find two different colours.
 
I don't know if this will help with focusing. I purchased an Agfa Karat IV that was near impossible to focus as it was incredibly stiff. As I did not pay much for it I was not going to send it our for repair. I tried a number of things that did not work. Eventually as I was lubing my Nikonos V with grease I thought why not on the lens. It worked. I put a little grease on the outside of the lens. The grease never came in contact with the glass just the metal.
 
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