What's your approach to CLA?

Bormental said:

I have never owned so many old cameras before (I now have five). As I've been growing my collection, I avoided deals where a camera required a CLA, i.e. something was obviously off, like a sticky shutter or lenses with fungus and haze..

All my cameras are fully operational and I sort of adopted "no CLA needed unless something is wrong" approach, but recently I realized that's not how I treat used cars, for example. With cars, you do some preventive maintenance, especially if you just bought one, to avoid problems in the future.

On one hand, the used car analogy makes sense, on the other hand cars are designed to be maintained and maintenance is a part of a user manual. I do not see cameras be designed to be frequently opened up, and repair/maintenance manuals aren't even included and historically have only been available to authorized repair centers.

I also do not know what the original design parameters were. Did Rolleiflex engineers really expect their cameras to be fully functional 60 years later?

So... on a spectrum from "if it ain't broke don't fix it" to having a list of regular maintenance items every N years, what's your approach to CLA and camera maintenance in general?

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Cameras like to be used. If they sit on the shelf for too long, they start having problems and need CLA.

@shutterfinger and that's exactly what I will build! Thank you!

Since I service motion-picture film equipment professionally my CLA approach is perhaps a little different. To clean a camera’s or a projector’s parts, after complete disassembly obviously, is something very important for me. I don’t use a ultrasonic washer but prefer to lay parts in solvents for hours to days, even if it costs paint or lacquer. With lenses I sometimes redo the lacquer finish depending on degradation.

I have a Paillard-Bolex H-16 Reflex on my bench these days, almost a ruin. I have found so many problems with it that I almost told the client to search another one in better shape. But we agreed on an amount of money and now I go over each part to make sure of its function. The camera is of the same age as me, so it has to be.

Lubrication is a critical subject. In that respect an oilable mechanism outperforms the others like a Bell & Howell Filmo 70 the Bolex. The less well designed makes need CLA more frequently. It’s as simple as that.

To adjust, whew, a GIC 16 the other week simply has its aperture plate not parallel to the lens seat. Left and right parts of the image will not be equally in focus. Nothing to adjust, the film race would need to be machined first of all. The lost material would be compensated by a shim sheet. How to adjust image height, if the parts hardly have space among each other? How adjust the play of the shutter gears, if the Bolex’ front plate has no room between screw bores and housing? After all it’s a snob’s camera, made for sale, nothing more. When heavily damaged back in the days of the company, Paillard would swap the entire mechanism or a group. Bell & Howell already did so in the twenties.

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Sirius Glass said:

I do CLAs when necessary.

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I need to add that I buy my equipment from KEH and if the camera or lens needs a CLA, they will do the CLA for free and cover the round trip shipping.

I have rationalized my camera collection down to 4 Canon F1's and 1 Canon EF they have all been serviced at my local professional dealer over the last 7 or 8 years, I have had these cameras for up to thirty-odd years.
Servicing is expensive but I don't smoke or drink and I consider the cost to be an investment in my continued pleasure in using these quality cameras.