Pentax 6x7 Shutter Delay

[Punkinhed7]

I've been rehabbing an old (pre-MLU) 6x7 that was sold to me as broken. While I thought I had gotten everything "working" to an extent -- metered prism functioning, camera dry firing on all speeds (that sound accurate), I've run into a bit of an odd behavior. Soon after I got the old fella to come back to life it started exhibiting a peculiar delay after firing the shutter. Namely the mirror flips up instantly but there is a delay of ~.5-4 seconds before the shutter actually fires. If I point the camera upwards, either while pressing the shutter release or during this delay period, the shutter will instantly fire. The speeds still seem accurate even with the delay.

Part of me is thinking this could actually be a rather handy feature to make up for this body's lack of MLU, but then the part of me that wants to use this beast off-tripod wants to fix it.

I was originally using a new alkaline 6v battery and thought that might be the cause but I just installed a new Silver Oxide cell and have having the same problem.

Any Ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[John Koehrer]

Since the shutter is tripped by the mirror and there's no delay in the mirror itself. Look at the release linkage itself. Old lube would be the most likely but a loose or missing spring could also be the culprit.

Anyway it's just a SWAG for me but I've seen something similar with Hasselblads. Obviously not the same camera operationally, similar symptoms though.