That one Tuesday where every CLA wheel just... fit

I had this one day last month where I was rebuilding a Kodak Retina IIa, and normally those CLA jobs are a nightmare. The shutter gears get gummed up and the little screws strip if you look at them wrong. But on this particular Tuesday, I pulled the lens assembly apart and every single part came loose clean. The old lubricant had turned to a nice soft powder instead of concrete, and the shutter speeds sounded perfect after just one clean. I even got the self timer working without a fight, which basically never happens. It was like the camera wanted to be fixed. Then I spent the next three days fighting a mangled Yashica-Mat focus helicoid to balance things out. Has anyone else had a camera that seemed to cooperate more than usual?

2 comments

2 Comments

gonzalez.vera1mo agoTop Commenter

Happened to me with an old Canon FTb once. The whole shutter mechanism just glided like it was freshly greased even though it had been sitting for years. The mirror return was snappy and the meter needle settled right away. I kept waiting for something to screw up but it never did.

schmidt.grace1mo ago

I've had a few cameras that felt like they were basically fixing themselves, and I ALWAYS brace for the universe to balance it out - @gonzalez.vera is right about that. My luckiest CLA was a beat up Argus C3 where the rangefinder mirror was perfectly aligned after I just blew some dust off it, and I KNEW I was going to pay for that later. Sure enough, the next camera I touched was a folding Agfa that had more bellows pinholes than a colander, and I spent a week patching them. It's like the camera gods give you one easy win so you don't just give up entirely.