Well, this little tale just took a turn for the worst.
I'd ordered another drive from KEH, which came in this morning. It was quicker than waiting for parts from Sover, and would also answer a question I had about maybe the camera was putting too much stress on the drive.
The new drive worked just fine. For a while. Then it just started running through the numbers on the counter, without advancing the frame.
When I took it off the camera, the drive socket and head of its retaining screw came off the camera. Now that just blows, you know? But, I've two other bodies that had accumulated in the pursuit of lenses. I'll just swap things around, and be all fine I thought. There I go thinking again.
Now to make things plainer, I have three F2 bodies and finders. They are 1) Black with a DP-2 that worked fine; 2) Chrome with a DP-2 that only worked after about a minute to warm up (bad capacitor?); and 3) Chrome with a busted DP-1. This was also the order I got them in. The black one has been around for a few years, the two chrome ones arrived within the last year.
First thought was to swap finders around to get the best outfit. #2 looked the best, and #3 needs seals, so I decided to put the DP-1 on body #1, the good DP-2 on body #2, and the slow DP-2 on body #3.
But the finder wouldn't work on body #2. I thought I got them mixed up somehow, but as I looked at them, I knew that wasn't the problem, as the good one has a red setting mark on the ASA dial, while the other has a white mark. So I swapped heads again, and still no meter lights. I put a new 3v lithium in the camera, and that did nothing. So I swapped heads around on the #3 body, and they both worked! One more test was to swap batteries with the old one out of the #2 body into the #3 body, and it was good with both DP-2s.
Ah ha! The little bulb in my head got pretty bright at this point (which is pretty good for a 14 watt'r), so I grabbed the volt/ohm meter off my workbench, and sure enough the reading on body #3 was 3.06v, and on #2 it was 0.8v. It's a high resistance power circuit in the body, not a bad capacitor in the meter head. That's why it took so long to power up the meter, the capacitor had to get filled up first, and 0.8v wasn't doing it in a timely fashion.
So now I have a parts body I can get the retaining screw from to fix body #1, and a P screen I can use in the other bodies. (Or as an alternate, I can just use body #2 with the busted DP-1 like it's an eye-level no-meter prism) All I need is some seals to get body #3 in shape, and at least one more MB-2 for when I get the other two MD-3s fixed so both #1 and #3 have drivers.
And folks wonder what keeps me busy in my retirement.
PF
