Leica m4-p top plate removal

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coffeelatte

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Hi
I got a nice Leica M4-p, but I think it has some fungus, oil or something like that in the finder. It looks like it is on the front glass. Since I am a poor student and don’t have enough money to send the camera to proper service I wonder if it would be hard to clean the viewfinder/rangefinder myself.

If I understand it correctly I would need to remove the top plate and then gently clean the glass inside of the rangefinder, right? Is there any guide on the Internet on how to do this?
If this would turn out to be to hard to do by myself is there any service place nearby you could recommend, I live in Sweden.

Thanks for a great forum and hope you great guys can help me. Thanks!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelahlgren/
 
There used to be a Youtube movie to do this for an M6, which is almost identical. For some reason it was taken off the web recently. Maybe you can still find it somewhere.

It's pretty straight forward. But you need the right clamps that you can buy on ebay (for example ebay #180481033074). Don't try without.

For almost the same price as the clamps, Youxin Ye will completely CLA the camera for you.

Roland.
 
Alois Kosnar in Stockholm is good, the only thing I had him to was re-lube my Summicron. It took about two weeks for him to get the job done. I want to have him do a complete CLA of my M4-P, but it's expensive... He wants 3600 SEK for it, so I am considering sending my camera off to Will van Manen in The Netherlands instead.

http://www.ksc.nu/ <- Alois' website.
 
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I had tried with my second M4-P since I had the tools already. It turned out that some of the screws were corroded so I could not continue without the possibility of damaging something and have sent the camera since to Youxin Ye.

The M4-P often suffers from a hazy VF window since Leica changed some sealing material and the one used in the M4-P has a tendency to outgas and the residuals build up at the window. Cleaning with some alcohol should bring them back into shape if you manage to open the top-plate.
 
There are at least a couple of other threads on this issue on this forum - I had this problem with my own M4P - apparently its a well known problem caused by outgassing of some sealant or some such inside the camera body.

Here is a recent similar question by someone else and my link to the older thread which covers the topic of topplate removal in detail including what clamps / tools you will need.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104401&highlight=Leica+top+plate

There used to be a video on YouTube showing how to remove the toplate from an M6 (essentially its the same process but earlier cameras (including the M4p I think - I have now sold mine) has an extra screw in the bayonet mount that must be removed as well. Believe me if you have basic tool skills and a bit of patience this is not too hard at all.

The biggest risk is lack of organisation which brings the risk of misplacing parts that have been removed. In that respect I prefer to buy several small cheap plastic storage boxes - the tiny kind for herbs and spices - from the supermarket and place each screw etc in a separate unit which I have numbered by sequence. That means I can instantly see where they are and the sequencing for replacement. Oh.....and lay down a clean white towel on the table first. This way parts are clearly visible and any that are dropped will not bounce off the table onto the floor or under the fridge and be lost..................... Overkill maybe.

Private message me and I will send the video file to you by email. I am pretty sure I still have it downloaded to my PC (only slight doubt is I had a PC crash a while back and lost links to some stuff. But I recovered most and think I have this file still.)

EDIT: Yep found it.......I still have the file but its 22 megs. Still I should be able to attach that to an email. Let me know.
 
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Thank you for the video, Peter! Doesn't look as scary as I thought it would be, might buy the clamps and do some finder cleaning of my own one of these days!
 
I just cleaned yesterday my M4-P VF glass on the top plate.

Google gave two search results for it:

http://feuerbacher.net/photo/repair/LeicaM4p/LeicaM4p.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbtqDd-4qPI

I ordered spanners for Leica on ebay for 23 USD. It came quick and was OK to use.
Some of the spanners are not exact size, but still no problems to use.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/121949181641?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

The black ring which is under the advance lever needs to be removed, placed back carefully with one of these spanners (like it is shown in video) to avoid plate scratching.
 
I agree, simple enough. Buy the tools you need and do it. My M6 had a finder window that annoyed me, it was usable, but certainly dirty. Took 15 minutes or so, and is now clean as, very happy.
Gary
 
gbealnz said:
I agree, simple enough. Buy the tools you need and do it. My M6 had a finder window that annoyed me, it was usable, but certainly dirty. Took 15 minutes or so, and is now clean as, very happy.
Gary
Click to expand...

I seem to recall that my finder window got dirty too. Mine was foggy - there appeared to be some kind of out-gassing going on making the window much grubbier than it should be with all of the offending fog on the inside.
 
The clamps and some screw drivers are needed.
Some time ago, I tried to open up the top plate of my M7 to clean up the VF. Everything went smoothly but I could not figure out how to remove the on-off switch so I had to abort the operation. The M4-P should be much easier.
 
Does anyone have any information on removing the VF, frame counter, RF and frameline Illuminator plastic / glass panes from the top plate? Are they glued? What is the best way to go about removing them?

The purpose is for a repaint. Everything else I understand, but this is one thing I am not sure about. I don’t want to damage or worse, crack the glass panels trying to remove them.

Thanks
 
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