I tried both ways on a sticky shutter issue

Had a Nikon FM2 with a sticky shutter at 1/1000 and went back and forth between cleaning the blades with naptha versus just replacing the whole curtain assembly. Ended up going the cleaning route and it took 3 tries but finally got it working right. Do you guys lean towards cleaning or replacing when you run into sticky shutter curtains on older mechanical bodies?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordan30521d ago

Got a friend who collects old Argus brick cameras and he ran into the same problem on a C3. Tried cleaning it with lighter fluid like I told him to and it worked for a week then seized up again. He ended up mailing it to some guy in Ohio who does nothing but rebuild those old shutter assemblies. Took like three months but he got it back working perfect. My experience on the FM2 was different though after that third cleaning pass it has been fine for over a year now. I think the secret is you really gotta flush out all the old grease that has turned into glue over the decades. If you just wipe the blades clean without getting into the mechanism behind them you are just kicking the can down the road.

barbarac6721d ago

Different strokes I guess but I lean hard towards replacement every time on those old mechanical bodies. Cleaning is a temporary fix at best and you can never really get all that old grease out from behind the curtain assembly without taking the whole thing apart. It might work fine for a year but eventually that stuff seeps back into the blades or dries out in a new spot and you are back to square one. The guys who rebuild those Argus shutters down to the last screw are doing it right because they replace all the lubricants and springs while they are in there. A clean shutter is just a dirty shutter waiting to happen again.