Nikon FE problem

T

Tummler

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5:37 PM
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Sep 17, 2020
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Hello everyone,
I'm here because I made something I shouldn't have with my FE and I'm stuck.
First I had a shutter problem, only with highest shutter speeds, and then I decided to search for electrical issues.
I also wanted to clean my trusty old camera by the same occasion.
So I removed the speed knob, the winding lever, the rewind crank, the asa dial, the top cover and, what I shouldn't have done, the functional resistance element (FRE).
As a result, I disengaged the gear linked by a kind of belt to the aperture coupling piece.
I understand what should be done, but of course I don't know how.
As I don't want to go further and do more harm, here I am.
Please help !
Thanks in advance.
Christophe.
 
Sadly, Christophe, yours is a classic example of the damage that can be done by home tinkering with cameras.

At this point, learn from your mistakes, bite a box of bullets and send it off pronto for repair and reassembly by a competent camera service center. Do NOT try to do any more repairs of your own based on amateur how-to videos or advice by other well-meaning tinkerers - just have it put back together again properly and professionally. This will save you much frustration and misery in the long term.

Also resist the impulse to list this camera for sale on Ebay with your listing prefaced by "I don't know anything about this camera..." There are already enough of those on that well-meaning web sales site - and I've bought too many of them!
 
I gotta tell you a Nikon FE ( lovely as they are , I own one ) that has anything done by a pro repair operation will far out weigh it's replacement cost ( at least here in Canada ) . Peter
 
Thanks for your answers.
I didn't damaged anything, I followed the repair manual and Richard Haw's instructions to disassemble the parts I removed. I took pictures and notes.

I don't find clear leads in the repair manual on how to put back the brush gear yet. It doesn't seem impossible, it looks more like a brain teaser (like repairing the asa link wire in a AE-1).
I keep hope.
 
Moto-Uno said:
...a Nikon FE (lovely as they are, I own one) that has anything done by a pro repair operation will far outweigh its replacement cost (at least here in Canada).
Click to expand...

Agree. In Australia also. Every camera repair person I've ever met in Melbourne or Sydney drives a new BMW or a Mercedes. Not bought with money from the family trust...

Not to rub an I Told You So message in the OP's nose, but at this time Ebay or Craiglist may well be Christophe's best friend. The original F2 can then be a shelf queen in his camera cabinet.

Needless to be said, do NOT take the new Ebay purchase apart on your kitchen table at home.
 
Fair enough, Christophe. You also didn't understand what you were doing when you took your camera apart and to put it bluntly, you stuffed it up.

Many lessons to be learned here.

We have tried to give you sensible advice. Given your lack of expertise in camera repair, you have two options - take your bits and pieces to a camera repair center and have it put together again by a professional. This may be expensive, but that's life. Or buy a new/old camera. FEs are not very expensive and there are many on web sites like Ebay.

My suggested options are to take the line of least resistance, and make things easier for yourself. But you may not understand this either.

I doubt anyone will want to tell you how to repair your wrecked FE at home, because you will most likely do even more damage. SLRs are complex machines and home tinkering with them is a certain recipe for disaster, as you have already found out.

Beyond saying this, the discussion is now going round and round in circles. I'm leaving this one track merry-go-round.

Respectfully, my very best wishes and good luck to you in rebuilding your camera. You will surely need the latter.
 
You have been given good advice by Oz. I agree with him having had some similar experience as you. No one can “tell” you over the internet how to fix your problem as it is too complex and risks your worsening the problem.
 
I used to be in the same boat as the OP. But it took me probably a few hundred hours of work and learning, along with ruining quite a few thrift store cameras. Now I'm confident with what I can handle and what I really learned is what I can't handle, and when to send a camera out. The case of the latter is my Pentax MX; I found it for really cheap but since the meter is more complex than other meters, and the camera is SO compact, I knew that I had to send it out. That's it. Now I have a like-new MX and I'm quite happy with it.
I've learned some things via the internet but that's not how I learn, really; I had to take things apart to figure them out. That said, I always went in to the camera knowing that I can botch it up and wind up with a box of parts. I never have thought I could write to or call up Eric Hendrickson and ask advice on how to fix my MX. It takes time away from a technician's business and also works to put them out of business. If the person doing the repair messes something up, they can blame the tech, further weakening their business. There are hobbyists who do this but, just like repairmen, they probably have their niche. I can almost fully overhaul a Bell and Howell 70 series motion picture camera blindfolded (that's a bad idea though), and I'm almost there with a Konica Autoreflex T3, but I won't touch smaller cameras like the Pentax MX or other more complex electromechanical gear, if I don't have a spare or two. If you want to really this craft, find a technician to apprentice under. That's how I'm learning typewriter repair. And next week, that happens to involve me building some shelving to put typewriters on. When you want to become a chef, you have to start as a dishwasher.
Phil Forrest
 
^^ The internet can be quite the source of good usable knowledge , take here for instance :) . Hey it's only an FE , I've ruined far better cameras ! But, I now do a few repairs for a camera shop here in Vancouver ! It's pretty well only medium formats that I've become familiar with , 35mm is getting kinda tiny for these older paws . Peter
 
Tummler said:
Well, I thought I could get some help.
Click to expand...


First, welcome to the forum! While I have no experience working on a camera as complex as the FE, this site may be a good place to look for more information:


https://learncamerarepair.com/index.php


I hope this is helpful. Best of luck. The Nikon FE is probably my favorite camera, and well worth whatever it takes to get it back into working order.
 
Christophe, I commend you for at least wanting to do your own repairs. Sometimes it has to be that way, like when I rebuilt a Zeiss Contaflex II because no repair shop would touch it. Thank goodness it was old-style enough that it was more like an old rangefinder in construction than an SLR.


But I knew going in that I would be on my own in fixing it. Worse thing was it wasn't even my camera, it belonged to a friend, so if I stuffed it I was going to have to buy him another one.


That said, another friend wanted me to repair his Pentax Spotmatic F which was having shutter issues. I had just happened to buy one not long before that request, and it basically had the same issue. So I took a look at mine, and determined it was beyond my pay grade to be fixing someone else's, so neither his or my camera got repaired.


But one doesn't learn by not doing, so here goes. You say there is a gear on the FRE driven by a belt that links back to the aperture coupling piece. I'm going to assume you mean the part that drives the aperture to it's proper setting, which is a lever of sorts. If you have a photo of how it looked before you took it apart, it might jog your memory enough to be able to put it back together. It might also be something where more disassembly is required to reassemble the linkage. Then there is the problem of making sure the FRE and aperture drive are in sync when doing the reassembly.


If any one of those three things are impossible for you to figure out, then it is best to either send it in for repair, or just chalk it up to experience and get another camera. That way you can take the time to do more research on the issue, and if you ever get it back together in proper order you'll have two bodies to shoot with. That might come in handy some day.


But don't feel bad about the whole thing, it's something a lot of people have gone through before you, and many more will after. I think one of Clint Eastwood's characters said it best: "A man's got to know his limitations."


Good luck. I wish I had more information to offer, but that's the best I could do without tearing my FE apart just to see how you went wrong.


PF
 
Thank you for these encouraging messages.
When I started disassembly I knew something could go wrong but I had read the repair manual before to be aware of problems I could encounter. I knew that taking the FRE out would certainly lead me to some issues.
But I want to learn and maybe one day I’ll be able to help other people.
I couldn’t be satisfied with just buying a new one or having it repaired. I have other cameras to shoot with in the meantime.
Like Aalfano I love this camera and even if it takes me hours of reading and trying, I want to fix it by myself.
I started learning from the site you mentionned.
Meanwhile I managed to put back the brush gear and it’s working. The aperture coupling ring rotates like before. The next challenge is to put back the FRE to obtain good metering. I think I will need to use trial and error method because I don’t know in which position to put it. When I first removed it it was set on 100 iso and EV 0.
It might also be something where more disassembly is required to reassemble the linkage.
Click to expand...
That’s what I guessed too and it was a good idea. To tension properly that brush gear, I needed more cord length at the other end. So I removed the bayonet and voilà. There is a tiny hole in the gear that allows to maintain it tensioned (at least that’s what I thought, the repair manual mentions a tool stopper screw) and I found a needle fitting perfectly.
Now I will continue to try to understand the repair manual.
Thanks again.
Christophe.
 

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Moto-Uno said:
I gotta tell you a Nikon FE ( lovely as they are , I own one ) that has anything done by a pro repair operation will far out weigh it's replacement cost ( at least here in Canada ) . Peter
Click to expand...

I'm puzzling over what you mean by "outweigh." At first I thought you meant that professional repair is well worth the cost. Is that right? Or did you mean it isn't worth it?

I send my two FE2s to Nikon every so often for a checkup. No complaints.
 
The first time I took apart a Leica was in Iraq, in 2004.
I had just bought my M4 from KEH, and paid extra to have it shipped in a huge box, because the FPO/APO system doesn't look at funny words like "FRAGILE."
Anyway, I was on patrol at a FOB and a rocket came in; we all slammed ourselves to the ground but what happened was that the wind lever of the M4 overwound and stripped a press-fit shaft under the top plate, making winding impossible.
No more camera unless I got it fixed, but I wasn't going to send it anywhere; there is no Leica repair in Iraq...
So I got a pair of channel locks, my Swiss army knife, and my set of jewelers screwdrivers and got to it. I found the problem and, with the help of one of our machinists (I was in a combat engineering unit with a full machine shop,) I had a piece of brass stock turned down, knurled and pressed into a collar.
Got the camera back together, and besides the winder return spring not fully flexing home, I got it working fine.
Until I went to Rota, Spain at the end of my deployment. I slipped off a rock on a jetty in the Bay of Cadiz and flooded the camera with seawater.
Took it apart again, on a bench while soaking wet, and got as much of the salt water out with a few paper towels I got from a restaurant (yes, I know the trick of dunking it in fresh water but I didn't have any right then.) The camera worked for another day then locked up.
When I got back to the states, it was brought back to bare operational condition by a tech in Ventura county, California (I forgot his name, but perhaps the head bartender knows him.)
The following year, I sent it out to Sherry K and she said my repair was done great, although my lack of proper tools buggered up the camera.
She buffed some of the scratches but I said I want most of the marks left to remind me of what we went through in Iraq. The scars we incur through life are part of our story, they can never be completely removed.
Good luck!

Phil Forrest
 
Very nice story. Being in Iraq in 2004 must have been something extremely tough.
I'd love to buy myself a Leica one of these days.
 
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