Film advance on Olympus XA getting stuck at seemingly random points in the roll, but is usually fine. Why?

Hello!

I have a new-to-me Olympus XA. Bought from an ebay seller in Japan, apparently CLA'd (I can't confirm the extent) and good cosmetic condition. I ran a roll through it with no issues, but the second roll got stuck on the film advance. I stupidly pushed the advance wheel and forced it, and seem to have broken the sprocket holes on the film -- opened it up in a dark place and tried to fix it, but eventually just rolled up the film and determined I'd not have a full roll there. I checked the film advance mechanism because I was worried it had broken, and can't see any issues with it -- the little teeth that fit into the sprocket holes are all unbroken and move normally when no film is there. I loaded a new roll and found it to initially be finicky, but once I got the roll in, it was fine. I got something like 30 shots out of the roll before the wheel got completely stuck -- it wouldn't move at all. Because the roll was almost done I just rolled it up. My guess is that it has something to do with the pressure plate and the amount of pressure needed to get the film to advance properly.

Is this a common issue, or can anyone give any advice about what may be going on/how to fix it? From the feel of it, it almost feels like the film is advancing at a weird angle and getting stuck. The wheel has some "give", but it won't actually turn. Again, when there is no film in the camera, it's totally fine, and it's only done this at random points in the roll of film -- usually it's fine.

Thanks!

I'm not a repair guy but I have an XA and an XA2. They don't have this problem. It could be that something is slightly out of alignment in the camera or it might be related to the way you are loading the film on the spool.

I would choose your least desirable expired film, and run it through the camera, when you encounter this jam, open up the camera and see what it looks like when it's stuck (take a picture). Then close the camera and see if you can advance. You can use this sacrificial roll several times by not rewinding it all the way into the cassette, see if it jams at a similar frame each time, make note of how it looks when it jams each time.

Also see if the pressure plate looks parallel with the camera back. If it is bent, you might be able to bend it back.

Good advice, thank you! I have a roll of film I can sacrifice already, so I might just try to run the entire thing through right now and see what happens, don't know why I didn't try that. Good advice, thank you!