The Sleepless Perfectionist Strikes Again

It's late again and my allergy meds are finally kicking in so tonight's post may have to be quick and to the point. This latest repair hails from right here in New York. This is very similar to what was just done on Nightwing as there was some major gear train problems and it needed a gear swap. Of course there's little hidden things that make me pull my hair out, like a fresnel carrier hanging up inside the bellows or a weak fresnel carrier return spring. There were some other adjustments that needed to be done like the viewfinder needed some tweaking and the film door needed tightening... these are all the little things that can really pull the final product together but also take up a LOT of time. The problem I have is that I won't sleep until things are right... and if there's things that I can't fix or adjust, I'll be up all night thinking about it. I had some problems on this one... a lot of little roadblocks. I've done research in the past and I remember reading that different fresnel lenses were used on old model 1 cameras. I think this one may have had one of those lenses as getting an ultra-crisp focused image was next to impossible. It looks as though the grooves are a bit more coarse. After an hour or so I finally found the "sweet spot" on the viewfinder mirror and cleaned it up! As always, I hope its owner likes how it turned out and it treats him well :). *YAWN* ok.... shop's closed.

Here's the progress pics of this beautiful SX70. I start off with inspection and disassembly and sure enough I found the gear train cover plate wheel had been all chewed up.

Next step was to swap in a new cover and replace one of the idler gears. Here's the new gears and cover in place.

Next, I found that the fresnel carrier was having trouble springing into taking position so I had to pop the camera open and do some very light trimming. I've had this happen on another camera before... I'm thinking it was common on old model 1s. Here it is open and put back together...

After some adjustments, I polished up the plated parts and prepped for new skins...

And the final product!!! :)