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Nikon AF 180mm 2.8 lens Reassembly

Transcript

Hello, this is Jim from International Camera Technicians.

In the last video we took apart this Nikon 180mm 2.8 AF and I pointed out a few spots where this thing tends to get damaged. People are asking me how you take it apart, so I went ahead and took it apart. I’m going to go ahead and put it back together because I can’t stand people who take things apart and then can’t put them back together. Anybody can take things apart; putting them back together, that’s the hard part.

The culprit for difficult focus

On this [lens], a couple people on Facebook said they had a problem with it focusing really badly. This gear tends to be the culprit; breaks that little tip and then you have to redrill that thing dead center. Put another pin in there. If you do it right, these things will last for a long time.

Now I haven’t really cleaned this lens a tremendous amount so it’s going to be kind of dirty going back together but it is just a junker lens. The lens is a junker mainly because of one of the elements. I bought this to replace the element in another lens. I got that lens out and I just have this one. It’s got some good parts like this part. It’s brand new, well not brand new but it’s still in one piece. And so I’m going keep this in case I ever get another one. Let’s go ahead and put this together.

First step — add the gear and bracket

The first thing to do is get a little bit of lube in here and then on the receiver end I’m going to put a little bit of lube, too. And then what we do is we go ahead and we put that [gear] in there. And then we go ahead and slide this [bracket] in and coupled it with the gear. Let the gear slide down in; you get a couple screws, these two, and go ahead and just tighten that in. There’s one, two. Wow, not yet. Alright, I got gears in, you see the tip coming out, yeah that’s usually where they break.

Next — the housing

Alright, so what we’re going to go ahead and do now needs to go into the housing. Get the housing. You have the diaphragm kicker there. It’s got to kick the diaphragm there. You can see I got a little oil there, grease there. I guess I could get it out, but like I said, it’s a junker so I really don’t care right at this moment.

We want to couple that with that, so find out where it’s going to go. I tend to like to open this up so now I can see everything. That way, when I look this direction, I can actually see the tip of that guy right there. And I can just put it right where it needs to go. (Whoops!) Okay, there it goes. Pull the bottom over until it’s where it needs to be. Just kind of push it down. Alright, Alrighty so that’s pretty much it. Let me kick this over, let’s see where is it at? It’s over here. Okay, diaphragm is stopping down and — boom —okay, so that’s good.

[It has] three screws on the outside; as soon as you align the holes — there — I just felt it fall into place. Holes are there, these are conical head [screws], so they go flush with the outside. Alright second one in. Alright third one in. Perfect.

Attach the inner barrel

Okay, so now the outside needs to go in. That is this guy here. So I think it’s called the outer barrel. Look for the front, see marked front, front, Voila!

Easy goes in, you don’t have to guess or anything. Did I miss something? Yes, Let’s put this on first. That’d be helpful. So that goes in once again, that has to fit in there; it can’t fit anywhere else. Spacing goes in, hold it.

These screws are tight. If you see they have the remnants of some ugly glue on there. Now when I was at Nikon they just told me to dip that in my alcohol, screw it back in. And they must be right because I’ve never had a problem with a screw backing out if I’ve done this. I didn’t think it would work but it sure seems to. Second, get the third one in. Okay, there we go.

Now attach the outer barrel

Now we can put on our outside. Find the front. There’s the front; it slides in here. Drops down. There we go. Three screws. Big screws here. Okay, Beautiful!

Put in the focus system

Alright, go ahead and put in this focus system here. Set this thing aside. This is your focus ring. Get your scale on it. Also get your gear teeth on it. So this guy’s going to sit in here and connect in with our little gear. You can hear the gear sound.

So this goes into the middle here. See, that’s going to line up with that foam at some point. But we also need to get our marks right so what I’m looking for is this guy. There is the hole. I know it’s going to go with that one so it’s going to go down somewhere right there. And we know when this goes in, look for the dash mark.

Do this every time and it’s just simple.

I think that one [screw] went skidding somewhere. I’m looking for a decent screwdriver; that one’s better. Alright, that and tighten it up with this. Okay. Now we’ve got to go around to the other one [screw hole]. That’s one’s here. Once you get one in, of course the other one’s perfect. Tighten that. Okay, bring this around, drop it down. That’s generally where the focus will be.

Okay, so where’s my Q-tips? I’m not sure if I have tape out here. I crinkled up the other stuff. I don’t see any tape right at this moment, so that was my fault; we should have tape.

Put the lock on

Let’s go ahead and put the rest of this section back together then. We know where the spacer goes. Okay, so we do know this guy [the lock] has got to go on. Just get our lock on it, the locking system goes into the slot right there. [It] only really goes a long way. Tight little fit there okay. Three screws. Third one in.

Add the body

Alright so I kind of did a quick repair on this guy [bracket]. I put two screws in it. For anybody that watches the [disassembly video where I] take it apart, those plastic rivets were broken. I just put in two metal screws. Really super tiny ones.

Let me go ahead and just put a little bit of lubrication in there. Just because I don’t want this thing to just tear itself apart. Who knows what I’m going to need that stuff, right?

I’m going to need one tomorrow. If it’s all chewed up, it’s not doing me any good. A little bit of lubrication. This does have to couple with the diaphragm, so this guy here needs to be able to move the diaphragm open and closed.

Okay and that’s on the body there. So it goes down. You can see it, it still doesn’t like to go in. You’re fighting a few things, you’re fighting this little spring over here. The spring doesn’t like to go in all the time. Come on. I think i got it. Nope, missed it. Come on.

Let me go ahead and just put a little bit of lubrication in there. Just because I don’t want this thing to just tear itself apart. Who knows what I’m going to need that stuff, right?

I’m could need one tomorrow. If it’s all chewed up, it’s not doing me any good. A little bit of lubrication. This does have to couple with the diaphragm, so this guy here needs to be able to move the diaphragm open and closed.

Okay and that’s on the body there. So it goes down. You can see it, it still doesn’t like to go in. You’re fighting a few things — you’re fighting this little spring over here. The spring doesn’t like to go in all the time. Come on. I think I got it. Nope, missed it. Come on. Silly thing, there it goes. Alright. A little squeaky.

Add the other gear

Alright, so we have the gear go on here. I’ve got to give [the gear] some lube. This one is just filthy, and I didn’t clean all between the elements. I’m sorry, I mean between the teeth. It’s just got a ton of stuff. But I just want to show you one quick, maybe some air, sorry, okay.

Alright it’s going to go down here. Drop it in until it hits where it’s supposed to go. You’ll feel it drop in. Okay we can feel the gear now. We stopped this from making a lot of noise. A little bit of lube in here, okay, that’s where that knuckle of the gear is going to go. Put that in. I can feel — it actually jumped up. It’s not quite down yet. There. Hear that go clunk. There, it just seated itself.

Alright. If I had tape, I’d put it all together. But it’s not that big of a deal. I’m actually going to stop the video here and go get some tape.

Drop in the coupler

Let’s go ahead and put this guy on it’ll be all ready to go. [This]flat spot is for the coupler and the coupler has got to clear. [It needs] two screws. The holes are for the mount. Drop that there, we go.

Alright, I see a lot of people get these screws wrong. I have no clue why. It’s a conical head and it goes there, so it’s flush. And the amount of people I see put these screws in wrong, it’s just ridiculous. Let’s see the other one. Alright, it’s flathead screws. If you can see that. Okay, so they go there. Nothing’s sticking out. 

That’s your stop screw. It’s supposed to stick out. Stop screws need to be there on every lens, otherwise you’ll damage the camera. It’s a little screw right there.

Alright so that’s pretty much done. Open, close, voila! I’m going to grab some tape real quick. Tape it up. We’ll put this guy back on and pretty much we’re done with this thing. If this is done right, it will need almost no adjustment. Everything should be right in the exact same position.

Put on the outer shell

Okay so what I usually do is go to where does it need to sit and look for my marks. There are my marks. I just cut off that extra piece [of tape] I don’t need. I’ll do a little bit more on the tape-wise because I don’t like it to be in a video. It should be showing you a little better than this. Just trying to see if I have a tape dispenser. Yeah well, ideally, I’d like to have a nice piece of tape on there, but this cruddy piece of tape will work for now. I mean it is a junker, so I’m not really too worried about it.

This guy here is going to go in. Okay Believe it or not, this has no direction; just line up three screw holes. Don’t forget the spacers. I like to wind this up a little bit and that puts the lip so I can’t slip and go down and hit an element. So if you have a good element in there, you may want to protect it. So I focused it up to what, four meters. It puts a little lip there so your screwdriver can’t slip down into the lens. I learned that the hard way. Alright so that’s done, that’s done.

 

Put in the front element

Let’s put this front element in, if it cooperates. Alright so this is basically this repair down and dirty. It’s not the cleanest repair. [It’s] definitely not what I would do for a customer, but this is a junker lens, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

So that’s how you get it together. I bet if I went out and focused this, I bit I’d be right on the money I bet the focus works. In fact, I’m going to do all the checking on it and see if it does work. These are pretty nice little lenses, but this thing is very, very cloudy. It’s probably not going to get a very good picture at all.

So that’s pretty much it. I appreciate you watching. Go ahead and subscribe, if you would, and I’ll see you in next video.

Y’all take care. Bye.,