Well I did the unthinkable and to many sacrilegious. Here is my story. I acquired a very beat up Rolleiflex Automactic X perhaps built in 1951 in a rummage sale for just $10. The kicker though was that with masking tape, there was a small metal gear attached to the outside of the camera(?) The shutter worked flawlessly; the focus was smooth; the Zeiss Opton Tessar was clear and no signs of fungus; the finder hood was beat up a little but usable. The film winding was the big issue… the crank just kept rotating with no film stops and the counter remained at zero. I debated with myself a long time about how to remedy this. I already have two excellent Rolleiflexes that I had CLA’d at great expense when I was working. Now that I am retired with limited resources and time to do the work I decided to plunge ahead and open up the crank side to see if there was anything I could do to fix this. Almost without exception, the advice in these forums was “Don’t do it!”
Sure enough the “Interm Gear” was missing and the gear that came with my camera fit in perfectly. We will never know about the history of what happened here and what the previous repairman was thinking. Did he forget to put in the gear and closed the camera up and then had “Whoops” moment?
Now the very hard part came in that the feeler would not recognize film passing through. I played with this adjustment for many days, running many dummy films through the feeler before I settled on a satisfactory adjustment ( I can now re-roll 120 film in my sleep). I did clean out some gunk and used a little dab of singer oil on a few pivoting levers and such but by no means did I do a thorough CLA. I did discover on this camera, not my others, that after the film has been exposed and wound past 12 that I have to release the shutter or the film counter would not return to zero when the back is closed.
I exposed a test film and all is right…no film spacing issues which I was worried about. Images are sharp and dead on. It took almost a full week and many hours playing with this camera to get it right. Patience paid off but I think luck had a lot to do with it. My investment was small and this is a beater camera…would have never attempted this on a pristine or even semi pristine camera.
Sure enough the “Interm Gear” was missing and the gear that came with my camera fit in perfectly. We will never know about the history of what happened here and what the previous repairman was thinking. Did he forget to put in the gear and closed the camera up and then had “Whoops” moment?
Now the very hard part came in that the feeler would not recognize film passing through. I played with this adjustment for many days, running many dummy films through the feeler before I settled on a satisfactory adjustment ( I can now re-roll 120 film in my sleep). I did clean out some gunk and used a little dab of singer oil on a few pivoting levers and such but by no means did I do a thorough CLA. I did discover on this camera, not my others, that after the film has been exposed and wound past 12 that I have to release the shutter or the film counter would not return to zero when the back is closed.
I exposed a test film and all is right…no film spacing issues which I was worried about. Images are sharp and dead on. It took almost a full week and many hours playing with this camera to get it right. Patience paid off but I think luck had a lot to do with it. My investment was small and this is a beater camera…would have never attempted this on a pristine or even semi pristine camera.
