Yashica-Mat EM - unbelievable factory blunder! :(

Hello friends,

as I have written some ago, I've got an Yashica-Mat EM in a perfect condition. Everything is fine, it's clean and perfect, one exception - it didn't synchronize a flash. Well, I thought that there's some cold solder inside or something alike, so I opened it... well, you won't believe me anyway. The Copal-MXV shutter, in a perfectly clean state too, SIMPLY LACKS the unmovable flash sync contact, there's just a nice round hole in a shutter's side, and I can see the silver contacts moving inside on release! Can you expect it from Yashica? And the contact on PC terminal was never soldered too, so it's a factory defect for sure. And no one ever opened this camera, that's for sure too - judging by leatherette, glue and screws. So it looks now like I have to find some broken old Copal-MXV or Yashica-Mat for parts, or to invent something to replace the original missing part, or just to spit on the flash sync and use Yashica as an outdoor camera. How do you like this story, eh?

Zhenya

Dear Zhenya,

I once bought a 35-year-old Exakta with a speck of grit embedded in the pressure plate. I was so bad that it scratched the film. I'm reasonably confident it was a factory defect because when I removed it with a fingernail, there was bright metal underneath.

And NO-ONE had removed it in a third of a century!

Cheers,

R.

Dear Roger,

the speck of grit can be a simple overlooking defect, but my case is much more spectacular - you see, the whole very complicated system of M-X sync inside the shutter, a self-timer, all contacts moving fine, and no insulated contact at all, as well as no cord going to PC socket Where the people assembling this camera and testing it were looking to, eh? And I always thought it's only Krasnogorsk plant that could forget such a thing...

Cheers, Zhenya

I have seen the wire wrapped around the contact with no solder, but not with the wire missing. Must have been a Friday at the factory

John,
there must have been a very special day - no wire and NO CONTACT IN SHUTTER, just a nice hole shining with aluminium They didn't put a wire because they didn't know where should they stick it, perhaps.

Cheers, Zhenya

Zhenya, probably late on Friday afternoon just before a 3 day holiday!

Dear Zhenya,

To be sure, the grit is nothing next to your story. My real point was that NO-ONE had fixed a simple fault -- two seconds' work -- in a third of a century. Either they had lived with scratched film or sold the camera on. That's what I find amazing: the owners, not the factory.

Cheers,

Roger