Cleaning the sticky rubber of a Nikon F100

[Frank Petronio]

FWIW I got an older Nikon F100 that was sticky and what seems to have worked so far is to clean it by rubbing a cloth dipped in rubbing alcohol and windex firmly over the rubber. Like for five minutes, seriously scrubbing.

And then once it dries, dipping your finger into some mineral oil and very lightly coating the surface. When that absorbs it seems like just the right amount of tackiness to feel like a good, but flexible grip without feeling gooey or nasty. I can slide my fingers over to the switches without stickion and the rubber doesn't pick up lint or fibers.

It's only been a week so if it goes to Heck later I'll let you know, but in all my Google searches nobody suggested a solid way to do this without replacing the rubber itself.

YMMV and don't blame me for what happens. Cheers....

 

[hans voralberg]

That's good to know! What is mineral oil btw?

 

[lewis44]

Frank,
I just got one (F100) yesterday with the same problem. Did almost exactly what you did and it seems fine.
Great minds think Alike.

 

[Frank Petronio]

How should I describe mineral oil? Hmm....

 

[lewis44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil

The easy way. Follow the link

 

[FrankS]

How should I describe mineral oil? Hmm....

The opposite of vegetable oil.

I bought an F100 a couple of days ago. Hasn't arrived yet.
Lighter fluid may work too, but I don't know.
Interesting to read about the plastic film rewind fork.
I don't know the serial # of mine.

 

[Frontman]

Simple soap and water also works well. I use a solution of Simple Green and water, and scrub the rubber gently with a toothbrush. This gets it clean and non-sticky. This also works on leatherette/vulcanite, and the grip rings on lenses.

 

[Keith]

Tea tree oil also works very well for this.

 

[Frank Petronio]

Geez what a nice camera though... other than the fear of the funky rewind forks or the plastic door latches, etc. but in terms of actual using it, dang it works really well. Maybe I got spoilt by the great AF on the D300 bodies I've had, but this is nice and responsive with a great finder and solid feel.

I was shooting N80s because they were lighter but the finder improvement is worth the weight difference. (I'm a big guy though, you may not agree.)

(Something tells me to just be careful with the plastic bits and pretend Ken Rockwell never ranted about any of that crap.)

Got the new 50/1.8 AFS G lens and that's smooth and quiet, worth the 2x over the screw drive lens for that alone....

It's really a pity Nikon doesn't make some other smaller, less expensive AFS primes.... an updated 28/2.8... I am tempted to get the 35/1.8 DX to shoot with film and just fix the vignetting in post - I see some people are using them that way and I've had that lens for digital before.

I'd love to shoot an F6 with those new AFS 1.4 primes but that's Leica territory....

 

[Mablo]

F100 is really a great camera for the money. I just wish they'd used the same design with the F80 for the matrix-spot metering mode switch.

 

[tj01]

Love the F80/N80, small and light, serious stuff, I use it with 35 F2.

 

[robert blu]

F 100 was my last SLR before I switch to RF. It's an excellent camera and I like to shoot it with the 20mm F2,8 , I haven't, yet, a 20mm in my RF kits...
robert

 

[surrealistic]

I tried the Alcohol/Windex then Mineral Oil on my current F100 with no luck. Mine was only slighlty tacky all along and was exactly the same after the treatment. I ended up using some clear briwax and that has cured the problem.

 

[grapejohnson]

(Something tells me to just be careful with the plastic bits and pretend Ken Rockwell never ranted about any of that crap.)

Ken Rockwell is a bonehead. I appreciate all the work he puts in doing comparisons of many lenses and cameras for reference (like seeing comparisons of the same lens from different production times) but he's about as fair and balanced as Fox news. If he wants to like something, he'll say good things about it, even if it's a POS. If he doesn't want to like something, he'll nitpick at whatever he can. You gotta take everything he says with a grain of salt.