35SP shutter blade access

[Brian Legge]

I have a beat up 35SP with oily shutter blades. The camera is a few steps up from a parts camera - with the exception of the shutter it looks like it mostly works - but more beat up than what I'd send to John Hermanson (to whom I just sent a 35RD 🙂 )

I've done some light camera repair and decided to give it a shot. The front element was easy to remove, giving access to the front of the blades but once I hit the shutter assembly itself, I was stuck.

Is it possible to remove the shutter in one piece or does it have to be disassembled? I want to believe there is some sort of trick I'm missing but I don't see anything..

 

[olympusVFRF]

Hello,
do you already remove the aperture and speed rings from the camera?
Can you already see the mechanism(all the wheels and springs) of the shutter?

One way to remove it all (all the lens) is to gently remove the leather around the lens and remove the 4? screws to get the lens out.
i hope it helped.

 

[Brian Legge]

Correct, I can take it all the way down to looking at the shutter mechanisms. I also removed the board from the camera by removing the four screws under the leather, I un-soldering the wire, etc.

From there though, I'm not sure where to go. I thought I might be able to access the blades from the back - and I can remove the first piece of glass from the rear element though there is still one more in the way.

Ideally, I'd like to remove the shutter blades entirely, clean them, possibly remove the current lubricant from the lens and relubricate it. That would involve getting the shutter assembly off the plate. I was hoping to do this without completely disassembling the shutter mechanism itself but am not seeing a next obvious step.

I should probably get pictures up to help illustrate where I am at. I'll try that later tonight.

 

[John Hermanson]

I recently disassembled a junk SP to see how far you have to go the get shutter blades out. There is SO much work involved, an SP that needs this much work would be rated "beyond repair" (unless customer is willing to pay $250 labor to get it done. When an SP came in to Olympus with a bad shutter, we just installed a new shutter plate.
Don't do any of this without taking notes or pictures so you know how everything goes back. I'm not saying you should do this, so don't blame me.

Remove main shutter plate from body, unscrew large spanner ring that goes around rear element, this allows separation of focus helicoid and shutter plate from main plate. Remove next spanner ring around lens (which first one was covering). This separates shutter from focus mechanism. Disassemble rear rings. Keep taking things off until the screws are exposed that hold the shutter plate in. Watch for flying springs and levers. Good luck........... John

 

[Brian Legge]

Thank you for the info, I really appreciate it.

I was convinced I was missing something, that people who serviced the camera must have had some way to get into it more easily. I didn't actually considered service would simply involve replacing the whole shutter. 🙂

I feel better closing the camera back up and putting it on the shelf for now. Once I finish working on a few other project cameras (currently working on building a functional Minolta 7sII out of two parts cameras), I'll probably give the 35SP another go. If I kill it, well, i would have had to replace the part anyway.

Thank you again for the tips.

 

[John Hermanson]

Some have had success dribbling naphtha (extremely flammable) onto the blades and then working the shutter. There is NO shortcut to getting the blades out of this model. Screws that hold shutter plate in go in from the back, and those are buried under a half dozen rings. John

 

[btgc]

Ideally, I'd like to remove the shutter blades entirely, clean them, possibly remove the current lubricant from the lens and relubricate it.

I'm not familiar with particular model, though if lube hasn't migrated too far, you could try to clean blades by folded paper strips, moistened in lighter fluid. Flushing shutter releases old lube, but paper strips work like a mop, cleaning up grease from blades.

This is long story, not guaranteeing 100% success. It has worked for me in some occasions. And not on anothers. You may try.

 

[Brian Legge]

btgc, I started this whole adventure by cleaning the front of the blades. Unfortunately that wasn't sufficient as there was a significant amount of oil on the back of the blades as well. Between that and an excessively wobbly lens, I decided to start tearing the camera down*

I took a break on it for a while but spent the last few nights slowly breaking it down. I tracked down the looseness today. The ring with four notches securing the lens (under the disintegrated light seal material) had come loose. That was the ring I needed to tighten to get the front stable again. Future reference, that can be handled without too much disassembly.

The last rear glass element is now out. I'm slowly cleaning both sides of the blades and hoping that is sufficient. I'm pretty sure that any further disassembly will be beyond my means to put back together.

* If this SP was in good condition, I probably wouldn't have done this.

 

[Brian Legge]

Had to put this project aside for a little while as other more urgent matters came up.

It turns out I had two issues - the blades had oil on them and the shutter cocking ring was sticking slightly. This resulted in similar behavior to the sticking blades; the shutter seemed sluggish or failed to fire occasionally. The annoying part was that this behavior didn't show up until the front of the camera was reassembled as everything looked fine when cocking the shutter and firing it manually.

Once I got everything back together and verified working, I decided to tear it back down and clean it more thoroughly as I put it back together. I took time to document the tear down for anyone interested in the future, as I haven't seen much info on the camera. Assuming I can fine time, I'll post a separate thread with this info this weekend.

 

[Brian Legge]

So to wrap up the discussion, a walk through of what I did is here:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97184

I haven't run a roll of film through the camera yet - I still had a in line for testing - but it looks promising.

No hesitation in the shutter anymore. The slow speeds - under 1/8th - are still a bit slow, but I was trying to stay out of the inner parts of the shutter and I never shoot those speeds hand held. The focus looks good with ground glass, and the rangefinder is in the right ballpark. It seems accurate at near focus to 6 feet, very slightly off at infinity. Again, I can live with that.

The meter still needs work but is off. I tried a battery which happened to be registering at the native power and was still off - looks like a calibration issue. but that is a project for another day. 🙂