HU: £69 M3 spares body (UK)

[Matthew Allen]

I'm posting a heads-up so the temptation to buy it myself and part it out might go away. It's at Mr Cad:

http://mrcad.co.uk/shop/product.php?productid=502545&cat=1054&page=3

I emailed them to ask about specifics and although they didn't explain the shutter problem they did say that it was tatty and that "the viewfinder has silver coating breaking up". I doubt it's worth repairing but for £69 it would be a good source of spares.

If you buy it all I ask is for some good vibes.🙂

Matthew

 

[Blank288]

Well, I took this gamble, and the parts-M3 just arrived. Since I like tinkering with old cameras and resurrected quite a few FED's and Zorki's in the past, I decided that it is time now to give it a try with a real Leica. Just to lift the hood with help of the online available repair manuals (and good vibes) and see what happens.

It appears to be a very early example (ser. no. 740***) from 1955, with buddha strap eyes, old scale shutter times, glass pressure plate and unfortunately without frame selector handle.

At first glance the vibes remained a bit mixed. It looked like used by a war correspondent in Korea AND Vietnam. Indeed the shutter is stuck (tensioned), the viewfinder is yellowish and partly blacked out, the rangefinder patch is mostly unvisible and the selftimer handle doesn't seem to wind anything. The cap has a few small dents, scratches and a lot of Leicameter rub marks and a few screws seem treated with car tools.
The good news is that the body seems complete (maybe minus selftimer mechanism?), even with its spool and an original body cap. It only misses one vulcanite chip, shutter setting feels good and the visible part of the shutter curtain looks okay. The frames pop up correctly matching the mounted lenses and parallax correction works.

A thorough cleaning made it look quite a bit better too - even not much behind my trusty, well-used M2. This made me consider to consult my nearby Leica-repairman first, next week, to hear what he thinks of it. He revived my M2 in an astonishing way some months ago, and maybe he dares to burn his fingers on this example too ...

I keep you posted.

 

[Blank288]

Some additional snapshots.





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[Blank288]

... and some more:





What do you experts think of the 'earlyness' of this M3? I'm starting to become curious about the rarity of this version.

I asssume the finder problem will cause most of the head scratching in a repair attempt. As far as I can see the black spots are caused by some sort of decementing of glued prisms, rather than 'desilvering'. I remember vaguely that my repairman said that he was able to cure M3-finder problems by reglueing the prisms. I can always ask ...