Hello. I am interested in purchasing a camera with a dead tempor shutter (cheaper than a working one). I have repaired and CLAd several compur shutters (different flavors), own a lot of spare parts, but I have never seen a disassembled prontor. If the tempor is a compur copy, I assume I will have no problems to bring it to live, but not sure about the prontor. Any clues about that?. Thank you very much.
Javier
The people who say, online, that a Tempor is like a Prontor must be retarded. I've been inside both and saying that a Tempor is like a Prontor is like saying that a Timex is like a Rollex. A Tempor is
not a Prontor
copy; it's what they call a "simplified" shutter that is
very loosely based on a Prontor (and from what I saw, it was mostly just external appearance). I worked on one that was in a Zeiss Ercona once and I won't ever buy one again.
A Compur is made from machined metal. A Prontor is less expensively made from stamped metal pressings, but they are still
good stamped metal pressings. A Tempor, on the other hand, is so cheaply made it's like they used cookie cutters on the bottoms of beer cans. The shutter only has four springs; one end of two of them doesn't even hook to anything, it just braces against the side of the shutter housing. The parts are so thin that, when worn, they tend to slip under and over one another where they are supposed to push against one another. In short, Tempors are utter crap. I've seen higher quality shutters in disposable cameras.
Tempors can be really hard to work on
because they are such crap. In the one I was working on, the shutter had jammed and someone had tried to force it. When they did that, one piece went under another piece it was supposed to push against. It is made of cheap metal, so it had shaved off a tiny bit of metal from the edge as it went under. Unfortunately, the pieces were so thin to begin with that, afterward, it was like trying to get two knives to meet edge to edge. There is a hook that is supposed to catch the cocking ring at the end of its stroke, as you fire the shutter. The hook had slipped under the cocking ring too. In spite of this, the camera was still working, to an extent, because, instead of the hook, it was being jamming a little later on against some paint and other crud that had scaled from the inside of the housing. It was the only instance I have seen when cleaning a camera made it inoperable. The crud was the only thing holding it together. Without that crud, the hook would miss its catch, the cocking ring would go too far, and it would knock a couple of springs loose. I told the customer what was happening and recommended that he get another shutter, because his was not really repairable -- I don't suspect that many Tempors are.
I wouldn't get q Tempor under any circumstances, if I could help it. If I had no choice, I certainly wouldn't buy a dead one, because the odds are way too good that it wouldn't be repairable.
