Realigning Olympus XA rangefinder?

[Steve Goldstein]

I picked up an XA yesterday for basically free. The seals are gummy, but I have one of the interslice kits, so no worries there. However, the rangefinder spot is vertically misaligned, although the horizontal seems about right, and it's a little dim (hazy?). Is this something I might reasonably be able to repair? Is there an online manual somewhere - I've never seen one in my travels

 

[rjbuzzclick]

Can't help you with the rangefinder alignment, as I don't think there's a way to hold the shutter open to check the RF against a ground glass on the film plane, although if it's just vertical alignment, that should be easy enough to do, but I've never done it on an XA.

The dim rangefinder spot seems to be a common problem with these cameras. I used a trick that Rick Oleson describes on his website:

http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-165.html

It works really well.

 

[John Hermanson]

With age, all of the optical surfaces inside the XA RF (total surfaces 7) collect a fine layer of dust. An internal cleaning makes focusing much better. RF cleaning and adjustment is part of every XA overhaul. John