Minolta AL-F GN ring.

[Via66]

Hi all, I purchased a AL-F recently and it arrived yesterday.
The EPX625- manufactured by Union Carbide- leaked and destroyed the solder joint that attaches the red wire to the -ve pole.
Does the red wire go directly to the galvanometer?
The GN ring can be rotated 360°. Is this normal?

Any help would be muchly appreciated.

 

[Ulrich Drolshagen]

Hi all, I purchased a AL-F recently and it arrived yesterday.
The EPX625- manufactured by Union Carbide- leaked and destroyed the solder joint the attached the red wire to the -ve pole. Does the red wire go directly to the galvanometer?

I don't know but it does not matter at all. There is just the galvanometer, a switch, an adjustable resistor and the battery involved. As you have to resolder the red wire anyway you can take the chance to put a schottky diode in line so you can use ordinary SR44 batteries.

The GN ring can be rotated 360°. Is this normal?

Yes. If you set the shutter ring to the flash symbol the meter circuit gets switched off (a property not mentioned in the manual) and the Galvanometer gets decoupled from the aperture. By rotating the ring to the appropriate GN by focusing on your subject the appropriate aperture for flash automatically gets dialed in.

Any help would be muchly appreciated.

Your welcome

 

[Via66]

Thanks for responding so quickly.
My plan was to use the remaining red wire and simply solder it to to the -ve tag that protrudes from the battery compartment.
There is no copper left, only the insulation!
The -ve wire goes directly to the CdS resistor.
This is probably going to be the first time that I disassemble a lens with the intention of putting it back together in working order. I am a complete noob

 

[Via66]

The foam in the light baffle is pretty much gone.

 

[Ulrich Drolshagen]

I had prepared one for a young lady with an interest in analog photography recently. Fortunately there hadn't been the need to disassemble it this far. I only needed to change the light seals and to solder in the diode. The meter was spot on.
I fell in love with this little camera so I bought a similar one for myself. A Hi-Matic 7s II. I was not so lucky with the meter this time. I am going to swap the cds cell once I get the spanner needed to disassemble the front.

 

[Via66]

The battery leak crept up the -ve wire all the way to the CdS cell.