Grain
Early Morning
Replace a Leica M8 Cracked Front Cover
As I mentioned in my previous post about my Leica M8, although I fixed it successfully, the front cover was cracked. That meant that the top cover (the one with the glass windows for the rangefinder and the shutter speed dials) was hanging on only by one screw, instead of two, and someone had glued it in place, rather than replacing the front cover. I ordered a new front cover from Leica, at about $150. Not the cheapest, but it’s cast magnesium, so the chances of welding/brazing the cracked one were near zero, at least for my skill. the following pictures show how I stripped down every single piece of the M8 in order to replace the front cover. It starts half way through the disassembly, where we left off in my other post.
This is roughly where we left off in my previous post about the M8, remove the screw that grounds the flex cable to the front cover/frame.
Remove this screw
Remove the guiding spacer and washer
Remove this screw, you’ll need a long and thin phillips screwdriver to go through a whole in the front cover, to be able to reach this screw.
Remove
Remove
Remove
Remove the E-clip and the washer
Now you can remove this arm
Gently lift the motor assembly and undo those two screws
Gently remove the whole thing
Remove screws and braket
Move the light meter to one side, be careful not to break the very thin flex cable
Remove the rangefinder arm and stop eccenter
Disconnect the flexcable of the rangefinder
Remove screws
Remove screw
This is the last screw that is holding the rangefinder in place, be careful not to drop it while you unscrew it
Scary! :p
Unscrew
Free the flex cable from the braket
Gently push the top part of the battery compartment downwards
The flexcable and red/black wires are still holding the top part in place, so be careful
Free the red/black wires from the glue
Gently and slowly pull out the battery contact from the plastic slots. They are not glued nor screwed in, it’s a friction fit. You will need to carefully push them out with a screwdriver from the inside of the battery compartment, and pull them out from the outside. Do it alternatively, baby steps, and take your time.
Now you can get rid of the top part of the battery compartment, and undo the screws
Remove screws
Lift the bottom part of the battery compartment
Unhook the spring from the top, not the bottom. You see how that transistor is very close to the bottom of the spring? You don’t want to risk damaging that, so work from the top. Put your finger on the body of the spring, so when you unhook it the spring won’t snap.
Remove screws
Remove the frameline selector assembly
Remove screws
Lift out the circuit board
Remove the E-clip to release the lens mount button
Undo all the screws of the mount
Only one spring for the lens mount, no other screws to remove, way better solution than in the M3
Remove screws
Gently lift the bit-code reader and the shims
I had to take this picture and record the mess I made. I had no more space where to work on!
Unscrew the brass piece
The whole thing comes out
You’ll need a spanner wrench to unscrew the cap of that lever. I shimmed one of the spanner wrenches that I use for the M3, by shimming it with a couple of brass pieces.
Unscrew
Remove this bracket
Remove this bracket too
These screws, two on each side of the front cover, that hold in place the strap loops, are the devil. I could not for the life of me get a good grip on them and I could not unscrew them. I used a very good phillips screwdriver too, to no avail. They might be pozidriv? Who knows, I had to drill them out and order a new set. They are M1.7, so not very easy to find.
That pesky strap loop, hanging on the front cover. Once you remove those, you’re done, and you can start reassembling everything on the new front cover.
bonus shot of the release lever assembly. apparently that magnet is usually what fails and gives the shutter fault error on Leica M8s
Since I had it there, I took apart the rear cover (where the display is) and took a few pictures for reference
Leica M8 Shutter Fault (Broken Release Lever)
I recently bought my first digital Leica: a broken (of course) M8. The camera had a “shutter fault” problem, in which the camera doesn’t seem to be able to cock the shutter and, after trying a few time on power-on, it gives up and returns the “Shutter Fault” screen. It appears to be a somewhat common problem with a magnet in the shutter mechanisms, for example here.
After working on the camera, I believe I have an idea of what happened: the camera was dropped, and part of the chassis cracked as a result. Someone else, clearly not a Leica technician, opened the camera and repaired it (with glue, lots of glue). Perhaps because of the fall, after a while an internal part broke and a piece of it jammed the shutter. At that point the owner must have got rid of it and it ended up on ebay, where I bought it.
Error shown while the camera tries to cock the shutter for a few times during power-on
Error shown after the camera gives up and stops trying to cock the shutter
Remove all the screw of the bottom plate
Remove only the screw closer to the side of the camera, in the battery compartment
Use a small phillips screwdriver to access the screw that is all the way at the bottom of this hole
Now you can gently raise the top cover, that was held in place by the two screws that you just removed. Be careful, there is a flex cable that connects the top cover to the rest of the camera, and you must disconnect it before you can separate the two parts.
The connector that hold the flex cable of the top cover. Gently push one of the tabs upwards with a pair of tweezers to release the cable.
As you can see, the chassis is broken, probably because the camera was dropped at some point. That screw is the one that you have to unscrew from the bottom of the camera (see image 6). Because of this, whoever repaired the camera before, used a lot of glue to keep the top cover secured.
Also, when I opened the camera this piece fell out, never a good sign!
In order to remove the rear cover, the part where the LCD screen is, we have to disconnect its flex cable. Push both tabs down, but don’t try to extract the flex cable just yet. You have to lift the rear cover to be able to remove it (and when you put the camera back together, you have to connect the flex cable before you sit the rear cover in its place)
Unplug the power connector from the board. This is the most delicate connector on the board, and doesn’t have tabs to push or pull. Be very careful and take your time while disconnecting it
The battery cable disconnected
Lift the leatherette up from one corner
Pull the leatherette away, until you see those three screws and remove them
Disconnect the flex cable so that the rear-cover is free to be removed
Remove the three screws on the other side, after pulling the leatherette away
Remove the screw under the LCD
Remove the three screws that keep hold down the sensor, then gently lift it up
Be sure not to loose any of the shims under the sensor’s screws
Carefully remove all the shims
Put the shims somewhere and keep them in the position where you found them. They keep the sensor to the right distance from the lens mount, so don’t misplace them.
Release the flex cable for the shutter
Undo the three screws that hold the shutter assembly in place. The bottom right screw is under a metallic cover.
These screws are held in with thread lock, so be sure to get a good grip and don’t ruin the screw head
The hidden screw was missing, sign that someone else repaired the camera and lost it.
Relese the other flex cable
Gently remove the shutter assembly. The piece on the right of the shutter assembly, where you see the coils, sits very snugly in a recess, so take your time and lift straight up, making sure nothing is catching
You can see, between magnet A and lever B, that something is stuck in there! Lever B is supposed to move to the left, and engage magnet A, which in turn holds lever B until the shutter is fired.
I couldn’t grab that piece that was stuck in there, so I had to remove another couple of screws to move the magnet assembly slightly to the side
Undo the screw and release the flex cable
Remove that screw
To get to it, you’ll need a fine and long screwdriver, and you’ll have to go through that hole
Undo this screw too
At this point I noticed that the chassis, or front cover, had a crack in it!
You can see the crack extending on the front of the chassis too.
With the magnet assembly slightly moved aside, I could finally reach the piece of metal stuck in there
I put the magnet assembly back together, and proceeded to remove the release lever. Remove the E-clip
Remove the washer and the lever. The lever is spring loaded, and sits against the other lever, which is spring loaded as well. When you put it back together, it’s gonna be tricky, since the space is very constricted.
Now you can see why I took the release lever out: the piece that were roaming free inside the camera were once part of the lever (the metal part on the right, is a roller that was held in place by the piece of plastic in the middle).
Next to an SD card, to give you an idea of the dimensions
As a temporary solution, I put a piece of rod where the roller used to be. Not ideal, but it will work till I get the replacement part from Leica. Also, because the pin that I put in the lever is smaller than the roller, I had to file the other end of the release lever slightly, so that it would indeed cock the shutter correctly. Again, not ideal.
Update: I ordered a new release lever from Leica, for around $10, and there is a plastic roller that I did not find anywhere when I opened the camera.
Resilvering The Leica M3 Beamsplitter
I am at the point now where I can pretty much repair everything of a Leica M3 (mostly because you can find the service manual for it AND Leica still sells spare parts for it), with the exception of the rangefinder.
The viewfinder/rangefinder assembly is the one part that not even Leica repairs anymore, they simply change the whole assembly, retrofitting M3s with the MP’s rangefinder (for more than $900). For that reason, I started playing around with the idea of learning how to fix the most common problem on the rangefinder of an M3: separation.
One of the many parts of the viewfinder/rangefinder assembly is a beamsplitter: a cube of glass with a semi-reflective diagonal that is used to merge the viewfinder’s image and the rangefinder’s patch. Cube beamsplitters are simply two triangular prisms that are glued together, and one of them is coated with a semi-reflective layer of material. In the case of the Leica M3, it seems that they used gold. If you deposit a layer of gold (or silver, aluminium, et cetera) thin enough, part of the light will go through it, and part of it will be reflected. The most common problem with M3s’ beamsplitters is that after a few decades they separate, meaning that the glue holding the two prisms together comes loose. When that happens, the viewfinder/rangefinder is unusable. The solution is to take the assembly out of the camera, and re-coat one of the prisms with a semi-reflective material, and re-glue the beamsplitter back together. Getting the beamsplitter out of the rangefinder assembly is pretty hard: whatever glue they used to set it in place is strong and did not weakened in any of the solvents that I tried, not even acetone. My suggestion is that you slowly and carefully scrape it off, using drill bits to remove it from the holes it is in.
After a few attempts, I was able to deposit a semi-reflective layer of silver on one of the prisms, and glue the beamsplitter back together. The result is NOT pretty, but it works. The hardest part of the process is to obtain a uniform layer of silver, while making sure that the amount of reflected light is roughly the same as the amount of transmitted light. My initial idea was to do the deposition while controlling the amount of light going through the prism (with a light-meter app on my phone) and stop it once the light was cut in half. This turned out to be easier said than done, and I eventually settled on a “try again” approach. Once you get the hang of it, depositing silver on a small piece of glass is done in about 5 minutes, and with a UV glue putting the prisms together is even faster. It took me about 10 tries to get an acceptable deposition of silver, and I stopped mostly because I was going on a trip the next day and I really wanted to bring that camera with me to shoot pictures. To deposit silver on one of the prisms, I used the mini-kit available at angelgilding, and I used a UV/blue curing optical adhesive from Norland, NOA85V. My tips for silvering are:
- Use only glassware and make sure it’s clean. I tried to use some plastic container I had around to hold the chemicals and the glass during the deposition, and I would always get a brown cast on the silver coat. When looking through the viewfinder/rangefinder assembly I would see the RF patch, but the whole image was dark and brown-ish. My guess it that the plastic the container was made of interacted with the chemicals and contaminated the silver deposit.
- Use a stopwatch to record the amount of time the prism spends in the chemicals. In my case I figured it took around 3 minutes and a half to get a silver coating that reflected and transmitted the same amount of light (roughly).
- Keep an eye on the temperature. Like all chemical reactions, temperature is going to affect the deposition rate. Instead of measuring the temperature and trying to control it, do all the tries and deposition in one day, so that you know that your chemicals were roughly at the same temp the whole time. I did my final 4/5 attempts in one afternoon, so I knew that leaving the prism in for an extra 30 seconds would give me a thicker coat of silver, cause I knew the temperature was roughly the same as before.
- Be patient. It’s gonna take some time, some cursing, some sweating. Be ready to be disappointed and to improvise. Once you see the pictures of my result, you’ll see that you don’t need to achieve perfection to get something that works well.
- Don’t be clumsy. Once you get the deposition that you like, be aware of where you put your fingers! The silver that is chemically deposited on the glass surface is VERY delicate, and just touching it is going to remove it. Do not touch the surface once you’re happy with it. No cotton balls, not acetone to “clean it one last time before I glue it”. Just use a hand blower to remove dust if you see any on it, but no physical contact whatsoever.
The initial condition. You can see that the prisms is in really bad shape. I used this prism in another RF assembly, because this one was too rusty to be useful.
The two red rectangles are highlighting the dreadful glue that is impossible to remove with solvents
Remove the set screws, one on top and the other one at the bottom
As you can see, I drilled out the glue and, carefully, I was able to wiggle the beamsplitter out
Don’t worry, there is more glue at the bottom
One of the prisms that make up the beamsplitter
I used hot glue to construct a holder for the chemicals
I added a “base”, made of hot glue as well
Building the last of the four sides
The finished product
The finished product, with electrical tape to stop stray light from entering. My idea was to set this whole contraption on top of the camera of my phone, and use that to measure the amount of light coming in. I would then pour the chemicals in this “cup”, and wait for the light meter reading to cut in half. At that point I’d know that the deposited silver was semi-reflective, and I’d stop it. It did not work, and the cup was leaking chemicals all over (yes, I did use a plastic foil to protect my phone, so no damage done)
I managed to get a silver coat with this method, but it turned out to be too thin, and the RF patch was not bright enough!
After the silver coating, I removed the walls of the hot glue “cup”
I then used the UV adhesive and cured it under UV light (Yes, I am using a nail polish curing light, and no, it does not work very well)
I used NOA85V because that adhesive cures with UV light and blue light as well. The UV light that this nail polish machine gives out is not suitable to use with the NOA60 or other more general purpose Norland products
The finished product, first try. Notice that the alignment of the two prisms wasn’t that good, but hey, givemeabreak
Added the negative lens, curing this bond too
The prisms masked and ready to be painted black, in order to block stray light
In my first try I used the black paint that came in the mini silvering kit from angelgilding. Don’t use it!
Whatever solvent their paint is based on, it attacked the NOA85V adhesive and ruined my coating. You can clearly see that the solvent worked its way between the prisms
That had an impact on the usability of the beamsplitter, though you can see that it is not too bad after all
Another shot where you can see the damage done by the angelgilding black paint. Just use something else
This is a shot of my last attempt, the successful one. Unfortunately, I did not take pictures of the deposition process, it happens fast (3 or 4 minutes) and I was using my phone to time it. You can see the setup that I used in the background though: the beaker that I used to deposit the silver on the prisms is completely covered with silver now, and to the left of it you can see the rinse water container
Curing the beamsplitter. You can see that I used a base made with hot glue to keep the prisms up. This allowed me to put a drop of glue on the face of it, then put the other prism on top and, if you make it really horizontal, the prism on top won’t slip away and you’ll have time to align them perfectly. Then when you’re happy with the alignment you come in with the light and cure the glue.
The beamsplitter assembled (including the negative lens) and painted. This time I used testors enamel, and it did not attack the NOA85V, though it took longer to cure and I put two coats on it (24 hours cure time, minimum)
As I mentioned, keep your fingers off the silver deposition! Although it looks very sloppy and unusable, it actually works quite nice
The beamsplitter back where it belongs. I know it looks bad, but trust me, even something like that works and you won’t notice the unevenness of the coating when you look through the viewfinder
The initial condition. You can see that the prisms is in really bad shape. I used this prism in another RF assembly, because this one was too rusty to be useful.
The two red rectangles are highlighting the dreadful glue that is impossible to remove with solvents
Remove the set screws, one on top and the other one at the bottom
As you can see, I drilled out the glue and, carefully, I was able to wiggle the beamsplitter out
Don’t worry, there is more glue at the bottom
One of the prisms that make up the beamsplitter
I used hot glue to construct a holder for the chemicals
I added a “base”, made of hot glue as well
Building the last of the four sides
The finished product
The finished product, with electrical tape to stop stray light from entering. My idea was to set this whole contraption on top of the camera of my phone, and use that to measure the amount of light coming in. I would then pour the chemicals in this “cup”, and wait for the light meter reading to cut in half. At that point I’d know that the deposited silver was semi-reflective, and I’d stop it. It did not work, and the cup was leaking chemicals all over (yes, I did use a plastic foil to protect my phone, so no damage done)
I managed to get a silver coat with this method, but it turned out to be too thin, and the RF patch was not bright enough!
After the silver coating, I removed the walls of the hot glue “cup”
I then used the UV adhesive and cured it under UV light (Yes, I am using a nail polish curing light, and no, it does not work very well)
I used NOA85V because that adhesive cures with UV light and blue light as well. The UV light that this nail polish machine gives out is not suitable to use with the NOA60 or other more general purpose Norland products
The finished product, first try. Notice that the alignment of the two prisms wasn’t that good, but hey, givemeabreak
Added the negative lens, curing this bond too
The prisms masked and ready to be painted black, in order to block stray light
In my first try I used the black paint that came in the mini silvering kit from angelgilding. Don’t use it!
Whatever solvent their paint is based on, it attacked the NOA85V adhesive and ruined my coating. You can clearly see that the solvent worked its way between the prisms
That had an impact on the usability of the beamsplitter, though you can see that it is not too bad after all
Another shot where you can see the damage done by the angelgilding black paint. Just use something else
This is a shot of my last attempt, the successful one. Unfortunately, I did not take pictures of the deposition process, it happens fast (3 or 4 minutes) and I was using my phone to time it. You can see the setup that I used in the background though: the beaker that I used to deposit the silver on the prisms is completely covered with silver now, and to the left of it you can see the rinse water container
Curing the beamsplitter. You can see that I used a base made with hot glue to keep the prisms up. This allowed me to put a drop of glue on the face of it, then put the other prism on top and, if you make it really horizontal, the prism on top won’t slip away and you’ll have time to align them perfectly. Then when you’re happy with the alignment you come in with the light and cure the glue.
The beamsplitter assembled (including the negative lens) and painted. This time I used testors enamel, and it did not attack the NOA85V, though it took longer to cure and I put two coats on it (24 hours cure time, minimum)
As I mentioned, keep your fingers off the silver deposition! Although it looks very sloppy and unusable, it actually works quite nice
The beamsplitter back where it belongs. I know it looks bad, but trust me, even something like that works and you won’t notice the unevenness of the coating when you look through the viewfinder
As you can see, my final result is not pretty, but when I look through the viewfinder I don’t notice the bad silver coating: that’s because the silver is not where the image is formed! For example, you will see any speck of dust that is on the frameline mask of the rangefinder, but you won’t see that big spot where I accidentally remove silver from the prism. I hope this help anyone that is trying to do the same repair.
Inside the Leica M3 Take-up Spool Shaft
The Leica M3 doesn’t have the quick-load feature of later M models, and uses a removable spool to load film. You first put the film leader under the take-up spool spring, then the take-up spool goes in the camera, alongside the film cartridge. When you remove the take-up spool from the camera, the film counter resets. This happens because thanks to the mechanism that is inside the shaft where the take-up spool is inserted. The pictures that follows show how to take this shaft apart. Note that there are several slightly different versions of the Leica M3, so yours might be slightly different than mine.
Remove the screw at the bottom of the shaft
Unscrew this part with a wide slotted screwdriver
Once you unscrew the bottom ring (on the right) you can remove the internal parts
This spring is what pushes the clip that holds the take-up spool in place
The clip that holds the take-up spool in place
If you look inside the shaft, you can see a screw, remove it
That screw might be tight and there might be thread-lock and dirt, so you might have to use a chuck or a pin-vise to hold the shaft on the other end
The screw removed
There is a small spring underneath the screw
You can see some bushings inside the shaft
Remove the “pointy” part. Yes, that is the technical term for it.
There is a brass and a plastic bushing in the shaft
More bushings
A plastic bushing
and a metal bushing
Remove the set-screw
Unscrew the last piece from it. The piece on the right is the one that advances the film counter, but only when the take-up spool is inserted.
Inside a Leica M3 Shutter Curtain Roller
Have you ever wondered what’s inside an M3 shutter curtain roller? It’s a simple spring, the one that you can regulate when you remove the Leica M3 bottom plate. I am completely dismantling an M3, and I opened up the roller of the 1st shutter curtain to see what’s inside. As you can see, the grease in there is completely dried up. I don’t know if the rollers get a lot of cleaning usually, because removing them is a lot of work.
Remove the E-clip at the top of the roller, and remove the brass washer as well
You can now remove the shoulder (that cylinder on the right where the curtain ribbon has to be glued on)
There is another washer in there
Use a pin-vise or a chuck (on the left) to hold the arbor, and unscrew the bottom of the roller (that part on the right with the screwdriver slot in it, it is a left-handed screw). You might want to dip the bottom end in acetone for a second, because there is some thread-lock on the thread. Also, remember to use thread-lock when you reassemble!
Remove the washer and the E-clip
Remove the other shoulder
Unscrew the top part of the roller from the body. This is the most difficult part, since gripping that small cap is difficult. I used a drill chuck and it worked.
Once you unscrew the cap, you can pull it out. The roller spring is fastened to both the arbor (on the left) and the cap, which in turn couples it with the body of the roller
You can pull the end of the spring out of the cap and remove it, don’t forget to take off the washer as well
All the components of the first shutter curtain roller, ready for cleaning and lubricating
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