De Vere 504 Disassembly / Rebuild

[yelmarb]

I've purchased a De Vere 504 bench top enlarger that has very stiff control wheels. I've since opened up the inspection ports on the back of the column and I can see that the grease on all moving parts has turned to that dark brown, sticky gunk which is the root cause of the issue.

The best way I can see to deal with this is to strip the enlarger down, clean and regrease all the moving parts and bearings. However, to remove the light head and negative stage from the column means detaching 2 very strong, flat metal wound springs. Is there a best practise for this? Can the spring be held in some way?

 

[Lachlan Young]

Contact John Boyce at Odyssey Sales (the successor to De Vere) before you start messing around with the tensator springs - or stripping it to the column. It's pretty obvious how to take the head off (and it's in the 504 manual) and de-tension the tensators, but I would strongly advise speaking with John first - Odyssey are based in Brighton & it might end up being cheaper overall to get them to service it than attempting to do it yourself.

One other thought, have you adjusted the nylon screws beside the bolts that lock the control wheels into their relevant wire drive pulleys?

 

[oliton]

Like Lachlan said, you should get in touch with John@Odyssey.
But you could also try using some lighter fluid to soften the old grease first. A Leica specialist showed me this trick.
If it is indeed the problem, you should regain smooth action.
Then you can refresh the grease resting assured that it was the issue.

 

[yelmarb]

Thanks guys. I reached out to John at Odyssey who recommended that I don't take off the metal counterbalance spring. I can also highly recommend NOT to take off the drive pulley cable system. Unless you want to give up hours of your day trying to get it back together. Even with the instructions it's difficult and time consuming. The De Vere 504 enlarger is not something that was designed to be rebuilt easily.

 

[mshchem]

I would take all the good advice.

My experience with a geared Majestic tripod head. Similar dry stiff 50 year old grease, cleaned with solvent, relubed with white lithium grease. Went from barely movable to free and easy. Crank it with 2 fingers.
I had a counterbalance spring break on a garage door many years back. It sounded like a small bomb went off.

 

[yelmarb]

I was hoping to do a full rebuild to properly degrease all moving parts but it's not worth it. Just degrease and then lube the moving parts in place. It's now as smooth as I remember them being.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

I was hoping to do a full rebuild to properly degrease all moving parts but it's not worth it. Just degrease and then lube the moving parts in place. It's now as smooth as I remember them being.

Oddly, both of my De Vere enlargers have been fine in terms of the control / focusing wheels - although my older and more well used 5108 is looser to operate than my 1990s 504; as far as I'm aware the 504 had very little use before me and I think I'm only the third owner from new. I remember dissembling and transporting the 5108 was more involved and did need some attention given to the counterbalance mechanism, with everything securely locked in place.