Solms Leica M4 repair/service costs !urgent!

[flessas]

Hi,
send it directly to Solms. Do not trust the Athenians....🙄

 

[rlouzan]

A few years ago a gentelman was quoted $1200 for a CLA:bang:by Leica Northvale (M3 SS + 50mm DR Summicron). According to them "someone did a botch job on them" and added "would you mind telling us who did it?"
Respons: LEICA UK! 😱

If I'm lying, I'm dying😱

All kinds of people work on Leicas. That does not mean they know what they are doing. Yours is clearly incopotent and should rerepair for free. Problem is should you trust him?
My opinion is write it off.


People like CC Lutton in England, but I am sure there are other competent ones.

As for cost, all costs are sunk and gone. Decide if a competent repair is worth it to get the camera going.

One aside, My first like would jam after a roll or two. Several worked on it and the problem kept coming back. It was finally diagnosed as film chips in the shutter track which previous people missed. Leica in USA corrected the problem. You get this if you try to pull an extra frame or two and the sprocket holes tear out and the chips go where they should not. Been fine for 25 years now

 

[nzeeman]

you could try leicashop in vienna maybe - i bought lens from them and they were very fast. i dont know how good are they in repairs but i asked them once how much is for CLA an it was lot cheaper i think - they will tell you estimate price if you send them mail.

 

[JohnTF]

I don't want to send it to the US since I might have trouble with the customs here in Greece when it comes back......
c

My friend had his Nikon repaired here, and shipped to the UK with the repair notice on the outside, they did not charge anything at customs.

I know it is not Greece, but it is EU.

Even if they want to charge tax on the repair, you will still be ahead, assume you will get documentation when you ship it out of the country.

There are several options here, the only camera repair I had performed in Europe was in Prague.


Regards, John

 

[David Murphy]

yup send it to DAG - he told me he spent two years training at Leica in Germany - the guy knows his stuff

 

[maddoc]

Sorry to hear about your experience. Unfortunately, the shutter curtains are the Achilles heel of the M4. For a reason I don't know (the information comes from a camera repairman well known here), the shutter curtain(s) of the M4 more easily rip of the shutter drum than with other M Leicas, if the mechanics is not properly cleaned and lubricated.

770 euros is expensive but you will receive back a Leica with certificate from Leica, warranty for the work, and the assurance that it is back to specifications.

I had my M4-P (bought it for $900) overhauled by Leica Japan and the cost were $750 (including a new wind-unit for $250). The camera came back like new.

 

[JohnTF]

yup send it to DAG - he told me he spent two years training at Leica in Germany - the guy knows his stuff

Just talked to my friend Igor, sends Don repairs every month, and he says though he may take the phone off the hook occasionally to get things done, he is without a doubt one of the best, if not the best repairman in terms of Leica bodies and lenses.

Everyone tells me how pleasant a guy he is as well. I know a guy who specialized in SM Leicas for 30 years who told me Don is very generous with advise, parts, and most of all, his time.

Not surprising he gets busy.

Igor and I were also discussing that it is not unreasonable to expect that reliable repairs down the line are going to be harder to come by, I do not see a line of young guys ready to take up the art, though I would be happy to be wrong.

Regards, John

 

[rbiemer]

Seems to me that the local shop should be charging you 777 - 152=650. In other words, since they didn't actually fix your camera--and may have made it worse--they ought to give you your money back. Which would make the price for Leica to fix it a bit less. I don't know if it's enough less to make economic sense or not, though.
Rob

 

[giatzakc]

I am bringing this thread back from the dead to give you a little bit of heads up for the matter....

The M4 came back from Solms as I told them I did not want the cla/repair (the estimate was 777 euro!).

I talked to the greek guy that tried to fix the camera and complained about how bad a job he had done (he said I was doing something wrong such as not inserting the film correctly) and he offered another attempt to fix it for free. At that point I was almost ready to give up and decided to let him try for a last time.

He gave me back the camera after about a month and as soon as I got it i started firing beginning from the slow speeds and going up (no film inside). Everything worked and sounded ok until I got to 1/1000th, at which point after every second release the advance mechanism would make a horrible grinding sound and would be harder than normal to turn....

I was very dissapointed, more with myself, because I let him try to fix the camera yet one more time.

Next morning I packed it up and sent it to Will VanManen in the Netherlands for a full cla. It was a good decision....
I got the camera back in less than 10 working days.
He has done an incredible job cleaning everything.
The camera is smoother and quieter than it ever was.
He provided a printed picture of the part that was causing the problem.
The cost (including shipping the camera back) was less than a third of what Solms had quoted!!

 

[HuubL]

Good for you! Will van Manen has CLAd many of my cameras and lenses and they all came back top notch. I doubt that Florian, up in this thread, had gotten a real v Manen serviced camera, although Will does stamp an inverted L seal in his CLA'd Ms.

 

[edodo]

Relieved to hear you got a nice working M4, it's a beautiful camera!

One thing you learned the hard way is that leicas are not easy to service. An amateur can really miss the "regular" procedure for CLA a leica, that's why there aren't a lot of good techs with the knowledges able to seriously repair them;

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Good to find that there was a happy ending to this nightmarish story! 🙂

Something a bit similar happened to me, but not with a Leica; it was with a Nikon AF lens. A local store to which I gave the lens did a piss-poor job, took forever (6 months!!) claiming that there were no parts, and sent the lens back even worse off than it was when I left it with them.

I ended up sending it to the shop where I should have sent it in the beginning. For a little more money, I got my lens back in 10 days... working like new.

Now... you MUST send a Christmas card to this very nice gentleman in the Netherlands... 🙂