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Let’s start with the shutter… See the black ring around the white,\n aperture-adjusting piece. Right on the front of the lens. Find the two\n slots and with your thumbnails unscrew it. Remove it and the aperture\n adjustment ring. Be VERY careful! Don’t lose the tiny steel ball\n that sets in the auto detent groove.<\/p>\n
\n I always do camera disassembly on a blue washcloth so any parts that\n fall out won’t bounce off my desk and I can instantly see it and\n put it somewhere safe.<\/i>\n <\/p>\n
\n Next, with your fingers, unscrew the front lens element. Now, if you’ve\n already read the shutter cleaning article for the \n Demi\n S<\/a>\n , you know what we are going to do. We take a tightly rolled piece\n of Kleenex and hold it with our locking tweezers. If the blades look dirty\n or oily, saturate the Kleenex in some Ronsonol and wipe the blades clean.\n But my blades looked clean so I was lucky. As soon as I touched the blades\n with the Kleenex they snapped shut. So I simply sprinkled some graphite\n on the closed blades and gently…\n very gently<\/b>\n …massaged the graphite\n in. Then blew the whole area clean with a can of air. Hold the shutter\n open on B and aperture set to 1.7 (wide open) to blow out the rear element\n area. If you had to use Ronsonol, you’ll have to blow air longer,\n until everything is dry.\n <\/p>\n Now snap the shutter a few times at various speeds.<\/p>\n Uh-oh, everytime I cock the shutter it instantly releases. I’ve\n seen this problem before. The cocking lever isn’t stroking the charge\n mechanism far enough to catch. Darn, so much for being lucky… What causes\n this problem is forcing the winding lever when something is hung up, like\n the shutter was. The thin linkage that goes from the winding mechanism\n to the shutter charge mechanism bows and also the charging lever itself\n bends. These components are very flimsy and bend easily.<\/p>\n \n Now, to get to these mechanisms, we have to get inside the camera a little\n ways. \n Don’t Panic!<\/b>\n It isn’t that hard. First peel back\n the top half of both front leatherettes. Unscrew the two tiny screws that\n hold the top front cover and lift the cover off. Open the back and insert\n a screwdriver handle in the rewind fork and unscrew the rewind crank.\n Use a pointed lens spanner to remove the winding lever’s pinhead\n screw. Remove the lever and washers. Then remove the 5 screws that hold\n the top cover. Three are on the back and one each on the ends. Remove\n the top cover. The shutter button will fall out. \n Aren’t you glad\n you used a washcloth?<\/i>\n <\/p>\n In the scans you’ll see I fully removed the front leatherettes.\n This is because I knew the meter wasn’t working and I was going to\n have to remove the bottom cover also to get to the battery wire.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n You might try getting to the charge lever area without removing the top\n cover if your meter is working fine. No reason to add extra work and risk\n scratching\/damaging the camera if it can be avoided.<\/p>\n \n \n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n On the scan, in the location marked "\n charge lever<\/b>\n " you\n can’t actually see the charge lever. It is under the viewfinder components\n in an uncharged state. But this is where it will appear as you wind the\n lever. To straighten, cock and hold the winding lever until just before\n the charge lever self releases, then wedge a thin flat screwdriver between\n the charge lever and the viewfinder bracket. This will be our fulcrum\n to straighten the charge lever so position the screwdriver as close to\n the lens as possible. Be certain you are wedging on the metal viewfinder\n bracket. Let’s don’t break anything! Then with another screwdriver\n pry the "\n bowed linkage<\/b>\n " toward the wind lever side of\n the camera. In other words, in the opposite direction it normally moves\n while charging the shutter. Stop prying when the charge lever is bent\n back parallel to the lens axis. The bowed linkage will straighten at the\n same time.\n <\/p>\n Now you should be able to cock the shutter and release it with the shutter\n button. Try all the speeds. The charge lever should stay in a cocked position.<\/p>\n \n Ok, on to the meter… First tap the meter needle with a small screwdriver.\n If the needle moves freely (as mine did) the galvanometer is probably\n fine. Check for broken wires on the top. All my wires were good and when\n I flicked the galvanometer terminals with battery power, the needle jumped.\n (See under \n Demi S<\/a>\n for a fuller explanation\n of this procedure) This demonstrated that no power was getting to the\n meter. In checking out the battery wire under the bottom cover, I discovered\n that due to corrosion the wire had broken. This was the only corrosion\n on the whole camera, about a quarter of an inch of affected wire. I trimmed\n off the corroded section and spliced in a short section of new wire. Try\n stretching your wire, yours might be a bit longer. Then solder the new\n wire back to the battery housing. Presto! The meter works!\n <\/p>\n Time to reassemble the whole camera. But before I put the top cover back\n on I pried the fogged window out. Since I had no replacement, I left the\n window empty with nothing covering it. I’ll keep my eyes open next\n time I’m at a hardware store, might find some thin plastic that will\n work.<\/p>\n \n I’m not a purist collector. My goal is to revive these beautiful\n old classics to a workable condition, not admire them on a shelf.<\/i>\n <\/p>\n \n To replace the light seals is easy. Just remove the old seal material\n and glue on the new after cutting to size and shape. Or better yet, buy\n the sticky backed kind. I’ve never used any but it sounds easier\n and less messy. When I run out of the material I presently have, I plan\n on trying the sticky backed type. You can find this and many other fine\n camera repair supplies at \n Fargo\n Enterprises<\/a>\n .\n <\/p>\n \n Finally the missing self timer lever… After trying a few levers from\n other cameras lying around my office\/library\/computer room\/camera repair\n room, (kinda sounds messy doesn’t it?) I discovered that the lever\n and screw of a Pentax ME Super works just fine. It ain’t original,\n but it works. \n Like I said… I’m no purist.<\/i>\n <\/p>\n Now, go load a roll of film. And learn to use this charming little gem.<\/p>\n <\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n\n\n\n Author: Henry Taber<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently acquired a Canon Demi EE17 off eBay auction. I got it fairly cheap because it had problems but it looked excellent cosmetically. Would you like to look over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classic-camera-specific-repair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/hauslendale.com\/kyp\/articles\/classics\/images\/demiee17repair1.jpg\")
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