1) There are no click-stops on my aperture ring. Is this normal, or is there something wrong with it?
2) Do the aperture blades never fully open, so as to give a round aperture? On mine, when I look in the back and turn the aperture ring, even at 1.8 the iris is still a pentagon (with the points almost as large as the diameter of the lens but not quite).
thanks in advance,
Jerry
No, you get no click stops. I've always viewed that as a plus though. You can't set your aperture at f/8.2 if you have click stops.
As for the "nonround" aperture, mine was acting like that before I cleaned it. It is round now though. You ought to clean yours -- it's easy.
Make a note of what ISO your camera is set on. Unscrew the front lens element (you'll need a friction wrench). Under it, you will see a wavy nut, secured in place by a locking screw. The locking screw has one flat edge. Turn it so the one flat edge is toward the wavy nut -- this unlocks the wavy nut and you can unscrew it. Unscrew the wavy nut.
Okay, pay attention to in what order the rings are stacked up on your camera and just lift off all but the bottom ring (the one with the shutter speeds and all the slots in the front of it). The bottom ring is the shutter speed cam. Look at the two small pins that are engaging the slots. Make a note of where they engage the slots. Now remove it.
Take a small artist's watercolor brush and squirt a few drops of lighter fluid on the gears. Work the brush back into the gears and scrub at them gently. Don't disloge any springs. Cock and fire the shutter a couple of times. Squirt a few more drops of lighter fluid in there and scrub it some more. Fire the shutter a few more times and then rinse out the gears with more lighter fluid.
That takes care of the gears. If you put the camera back together at this point, and if your shutter blades were clean, you'd have your shutter speeds back, but you're not done quite yet.
Get out a box of cotton swabs. Wet one end with lighter fluid (really wet) and gently rub at the shutter blades. Fire the blades a couple of times. Turn the swab around and rub gently at the blades with the dry end. Throw the swab away. Repeat about 50 times. This cleans the shutter blades. If you reassembled the camera at this point, your shutter times would be as accurate as they are ever going to be, but you still have the aperture to do.
Put the cam speed dial back on the front of the shutter, engaging those two pins back in their slots. Holding it in place, rotate it to the B shutter speed. Fire the shutter and hold the button down. You will see the aperture blades. Wet another swab and do with them what you did with the shutter blades: Wet them down with lighter fluid on the wet end of the swab, work them a few times, then mop the dirty fluid up with the dry end of the swab. Repeat this about 50 times.
When you're done, you may want to also clean the lenses, as long as you're in there.
At this point, you're almost done with a very basic amateur's CLA. Set your camera aside for about 12 hours and let all the naptha evaporate. get a fresh small watercolor brush and dampen it
slightly with a mix of ten drops of naptha to one drop of either Nye watch oil or Hoppes gun oil. Work that back into the gears. Let the lighter fluid evaporate. Do
NOT allow any of this to get on the shutter blades or aperture blades. Reassemble it the same way you took it apart. Be sure the ASA dial is lined up with the same ASA setting it was on when you took it apart. Tighten the wavy nut and engage the locking screw. Screw the front lens element back in place and you're done. You should have reasonably accurate shutter speeds, a round aperture when it is set wide open, and the camera should work pretty much as well as it ever did.
Only thing left is to replace the light seals:
Get one of Jon Goodman's seal kits. He sells them on ebay under the user name "interslice." He literally uses the best materials money can buy, and it will cost you all of $9 for enough to do a dozen cameras. On the hinge end and the latch end of the door is a 1/8 inch wide strip of fabric that is about 1/32 inch thick, and that runs from the top gutter to the bottom gutter. Scrape them off and replace them with the thin fabric from Jon's kit. At the top and bottom of the film loading door are some gutters. These are about 2mm wide and about 6mm deep. They may have some crud in them. Scrape that out and replace it with Jon's seal strip material. You won't need any glue. Be sure not to cover the silver stud in the top gutter. Cut the strips to length and carefully press them into the gutters so they don't get twisted.
If the viewfinder is clean, bright and clear in your camera, your CLA is complete.
