Zorki 4K, Shutter stays open

[Ozenc]

Hello everyone.
I am new to rangefinders and this forum itself. I bought my first Zorki 4k a few days ago. Just like many old cameras it has some problems. All of them are sorted out but one. When I use the shutter speeds slower than 1/60, curtain stays half open and when I give it slow shake it closes again. Faster speeds has no problems at all. I got it fixed yesterday (they said it needed lubrication) but it happened again today. It feels like shutter springs are a little weaker than it supposed to be. How can I fix it myself?

 

[KnipsOmat]

Hi there, for a start, you should read the stickies 'Zorki 4K - "HOW TO - CLA"' and 'HOW TO - FED & Zorki Curtain tension'. Try cleaning and re-lubing the big gears at the bottom of the shutter crate first, on big curtain drum and restrictor gear. To get access to these gears, you'll have to remove top plate and shutter crate assembly from the camera shell. http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-58.html is also helpful for this. You can easily tension the shutter curtain springs (see sticky), but you should first be sure that all other problems have been solved, otherwise this won't help for long. If the curtains don't close properly after cleaning / lubrication, it might well be possible you'll have to disassemble the shutter completely to get down to the reason for the problems. Taking apart the shutter completely is a major repair. Not for the faint of heart. I'm just trying to reassemble a Zorki 4K which has been taken apart by someone else a while ago. Phew. I've tried several times, but so far did not succeed to get the shutter working :-( Good luck! Cheers, Andreas

 

[wolves3012]

You can try increasing the tension on the closing curtain, as explained in the sticky mentioned above. However, it's my experience that a properly cleaned and lubricated shutter needs very little tension to work correctly. Usually the underlying cause is that a CLA is needed, so simply increasing the tension may be a temporary fix and the problem will return.

If you tackle a full CLA, the Zorki 4K sticky is fairly comprehensive, although I might be biased in that opinion!