Yashica Electro GX - Erratic Meter

W

WDG

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I recently picked up up a GX in excellent condition, but with a bit of a metering issue.

As I press the shutter button, the over/slow lights either flicker or refuse to come on at all, in situations where they should (for example: ASA 25, f/16, dark room or cap on... sometimes no slow speed light, etc.) When they won't come on, it also won't fire a flash. When they will come on, the shutter speeds sound right, though it doesn't seem to stay open longer than about four seconds.

Based on the flickering, I'm thinking it's a dirty or bad switch, but maybe someone with experience on the GX has some other thoughts? The battery still checks as good when this happens.
 
I haven't had any work done on it, yet. Does the GX have the same POD as the GSN?
 
I'll go search for the POD symptoms, then. I hadn't thought about that.
 
That certainly sounds like it would cause what I'm seeing. It would also explain why it seemed to get worse rather quickly. I haven't had the first roll developed, yet. I'm pretty sure the last half of the roll will be bad.
 
If the camera hasn't been used much, or has sat for a long time, the electrical contacts might be dirty. Clean the battery contacts in the battery compartment, and the fully wind the winding lever, and hold it at the end of it's travel, then rapidly push the shutter button for at least 30 seconds. This may clean off the shutter button contacts inside the camera.
 
Thank you very much for the help, Frontman.

The battery contacts looked quite clean to me but just in case I cleaned them with ethanol in cotton. I had to do it carefully, I think that the ethanol dissolves the black plastic inside the battery chamber.

After the ethanol cleaning, I let it to dry, I put the lens cap on and I fired 1 shoot every 30 seconds looking for yellow light and long exposures.
There was clearly a change, the lights were far more bright, more clear, no flickering and the shutter failed less, but still it was failing like 1-2 exposures every 5 shoots (speed of ~ 1/500).

I cleaned again with ethanol / cotton and I repeated the long exposure shooting test.
So far it didn't fail :)
 
I have cleaned the battery department and I did what frontman said. It worked for a few shots but now it is same againa, leds sometimes work sometimes not and battery check light works ok all the time. If someone have advice ill be glad to try it
 
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