Further improving the Kiev 4am

R

ruben

Guest
BEWARE THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY IRRESPONSIBLE TO PUT IN WRITTEN WORDS AND WORSE IF DONE WITHOUT CARE, but "facts are stubborn things".


THE SUCCESSFUL PART OF IT
I oiled the winding gears of two of my Kievs, via dismantling the plate covering the shutter curtains, following the first part of the Kiev Survival Site, regarding how to dismantle it (NOT ABOUT OILING) and achieved real success in further smoothening the winding/cocking operation.

How much oil did I pour ? A LOT. 1 or 2 drops of bicycle oil per each teeth-wheel seen by my eyes (and you know there are a lot of them).

Yet I should note that the minor different designs make a real difference to the end result.

The Kiev 4AM has a different, bigger, cruder, and ugly plastic winding/cocking knob, with feroucious teeth. It seems to have been designed for the Siberian winter when everyone uses gloves. Otherwise your bare fingers will need medical treatment.

From a past thread you may know that I overcomed this problem by wrapping the teeth with a doubled rubber band cut from my bike tyre. Now I can announce that the tyre band plus the oil bath make the winding operation a real German delikatessen.

Not the same with my 1964 Kiev with its traditional knob. Although the winding mechanisms after the oil bath smoothened as well, the winding operation is not as smooth with the 4AM. Why? because of the smaller winding knob, which also doesn' allow you to wrap it.

As to give a clearer idea of the difference between both knobs after lubing both and wrapping the one on the 4AM, I would say on behalf of the last that is much smoother than the film advance handle of the OM4Ti or any other Oly RF. I can wind endlessly frame after frame without any finger effort. But with the 1964 Kiev, I cannot wind beyond, lets' say, 15~20 frames, one after the other, without felling the cutting edge of the winding knob teeth.

Nevertheless there is another big news. After the oil bath, the already low noise shutter of both Kievs, became furtherly silent, I may say a 50% cut. THIS IS REALLY GOOD NEWS ! ! !

NOW ABOUT THE UNSUCCESSFUL PART OF IT

While the newly 4AM gears showed themselves dry but clean, I suspected the 1964 Kiev to have somewhat dirty gears. For this reason I decided to use a kind of "cleaning oil", which is no problem by itself.

But I didn't noticed that the spry cleaning oil canister had attached a thin valve to make it accessible to every corner. The valve is clearly seen, red colored, that I myself installed from another canister. But since it was there for many months it became natural to my eyes.

Therefore the spry action really worked as it should, but not as intended, and spreaded oil even to the rangefinding glass, the one close to the winding knob. Now the camera is within a box, waiting for a nice week end to dismantle and clean the glasses.

Cheers,

Ruben
 
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LCA stands for lube, clean and adjust.

CLA is something completely different! :D

good luck on your efforts!
 
Nice work ruben. I don't own a Kiev but this does sound kewl. Any chance you re-opened your Kiev 4AM? Just wondering if the oil stayed on the gears or did some manage to get on other parts after a couple of rolls of film.
 
I'm not really sure oil is a good idea. It has a habit of moving to places that were not intended. I think cleaning the gears and then using a grease might have been a better route to take.
Let us know how the camera is after a month or two of use.

Peter
 
w3rk5 said:
Nice work ruben. I don't own a Kiev but this does sound kewl. Any chance you re-opened your Kiev 4AM? Just wondering if the oil stayed on the gears or did some manage to get on other parts after a couple of rolls of film.
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Very Good point
 
peterc said:
I think cleaning the gears and then using a grease might have been a better route to take.
Let us know how the camera is after a month or two of use.

Peter
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As stated earlier, the gears were exemplary clean, and the camera smooth by Soviet parameters. Out of perfectionism I wanted this camera (which since I considered it the Cinderella among my Kievs, I did not mind to send there my unexperienced fingers) to become smoother than any other. I achieved it. And I repeat, shutter vibration and noise, low beforehand as in any proper Kiev, were cut by around a 50%. If I take the camera with my hand to the full extension of my arm, I hardly hear the shutter.

Yes, I agree now that grease should be given priority next time. And I pray with you oil will not migrate. If it will, I will learn how to better do it next time.

And yes, I oblige myself to report. BTW this camera is with me every day, although I seldom shoot more than a few frames per week.
 
Different kinds of oil can gum up over time, so selecting the proper lube can be very important. I have found with old lenses that graphite -- the powdery kind squirted into keyholes -- can work wonders. But you have to be very careful to use tiny amounts and avoid getting the powder anywhere that might allow it to migrate to an optical surface.

I seem to recall early Nikons used dolphin oil (eeewww!!! You've got to squeeze a lot of dolphins ...). I hesitate to even try to imagine what was used to lube Kievs ...
 
ruben said:
...
THE SUCCESSFUL PART OF IT...

How much oil did I pour ? A LOT. 1 or 2 drops of bicycle oil per each teeth-wheel seen by my eyes (and you know there are a lot of them). ..

NOW ABOUT THE UNSUCCESSFUL PART OF IT

While the newly 4AM gears showed themselves dry but clean, I suspected the 1964 Kiev to have somewhat dirty gears. For this reason I decided to use a kind of "cleaning oil", which is no problem by itself.

But I didn't noticed that the spry cleaning oil canister had attached a thin valve to make it accessible to every corner. The valve is clearly seen, red colored, that I myself installed from another canister. But since it was there for many months it became natural to my eyes.

Therefore the spry action really worked as it should, but not as intended, and spreaded oil even to the rangefinding glass, the one close to the winding knob. Now the camera is within a box, waiting for a nice week end to dismantle and clean the glasses.
Cheers,

Ruben
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Well, this past weekend I dissasembled to some degree the 1964 Kiev (THE UNSUCCESSFUL PART OF IT) and it looked like a real disaster. Real oil bath. I cleaned as much as I could and left it opened inside a box, laying on a bed of fabric for another week to see if more oil will migrate out.

I was so worried that I decided to wind back the film on the Kiev 4AM (THE SUCCESSFUL PART OF IT) and opened it for inspection: NO OIL MIGRATION SO FAR.

Why the differences with both Kievs? Very simple, the latter one got drops of gross oil, whereas the bathed Kiev got thin oil first and then the gross one.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
Ruben,
I know things may seem a mess, but I think congratulations are in order. You do things which others wouldn't dare and then return with knowledge. That is how every real advance has been made, often in the face of people like myself, who trust the books and are too scared to try! Good luck always! Thanks and respect!

Ian
 
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OK, I don't think Ruben is far off target. I've gleaned several repair manuals and parts of from the internet, referring to Leica. In one manual they advise cleaning a certain assembly with white gas, oiling everything heavily, a quick dip in white gas to remove the excess oil and blow off the assy with compressed air. In the Leica manual they describe a soak in a mix of "unleaded gas" and oil, and then a blow off with compressed air. I think Ruben's method is close, but I the excess of oil will migrate and gum up the works.
 
Grease the slow moving parts and oil the fast moving parts,only be careful of the type of oil. Wrong oil will slow a shutter down, I used a thin electronics oil to lube a leaf shutter once ,tested it, all speeds slow.Cleaned it all out and used watch oil and it was 1 1/2 stops faster and accurate.
 
Jocko said:
Ruben,
I know things may seem a mess, but I think congratulations are in order. You do things which others wouldn't dare and then return with knowledge. That is how every real advance has been made, often in the face of people like myself, who trust the books and are too scared to try! Good luck always! Thanks and respect!

Ian
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I agree. :)
 
Thank you all Kiev-folks for your mooving support. It is a really emotional. I may loose one or two Kievs (the best ones are spared from oil), or I may win a Super-Kiev. So far the 4AM seems to be the ultimative Kiev with its noise and vibration cut by 50%, and smoothenes increased by the same proportion. The real big question will be when processing the first roll, whether oil will spill or not to the film. Hummm. Let's see.

Meanwhile the 4AM is loaded with Neopan 1600 and going with me daily to work, within my back pack, over a bicycle. Therefore is getting a good amount of daily shaking. (Shake and Twist was the name of that song ?).

Kievs cameras are overwhelming beauties. That tremendous mass of German-designed machinery must be brought to work like German machinery. In our Kievs we do not have TTL light metering, nor viewfinder info, nor even a winding handle. But we do have the most accurate rangefinding metering ever, a very quiet shutter, high quality lens option, a contrasty yellow patch and an exhuberant external beauty finnish. If we can ad real smoothness and further silent operation, we may further turn the balance and the price/convenience equation, besides having a more powerful tool for uncounspicuous photography.

And let us not forget we all have the Kiev Survival Site, without which I am not sure I ever would unscrew a single screw !

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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ruben said:
In our Kievs we do not have TTL light metering, nor viewfinder info, nor even a winding handle. But we do have the most accurate rangefinding metering ever, a very quiet shutter, high quality lens option, a contrasty yellow patch and an exhuberant external beauty finnish. If we can ad real smoothness and further silent operation, we may further turn the balance and the price/convenience equation, besides having a more powerful tool for uncounspicuous photography.

Cheers,
Ruben
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PS: we also have a fine focusing wheel for standard lens and wider and the extraordinary Universal Turret finder, an advanced compositional and framing invention not found with any SLR.

As for the lack of TTL metering, in fact most of the times the most advanced photographers don't relay on anything else than their handheld digi light meters, wich many of us have or can have.

If the winding knob is made to work smooth enough, we may gain the ability of passing frames without loosing eye-viefinder contact with the subject !!! Thus partly replacing the real function of the absent winding handle !!!
 
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Success ?

Success ?

Ok, folks, three weeks after oil bath I developed my film and scanned: NO OIL ON FILM.
The badly lubbed other Kiev was cleaned re-lubbed and looks good.

Now is time to reveal another crime I held hidden: I lubed the curtains too !

Therefore I move on to my two other Kievs, my best ones.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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