Nikon FE3: Disassembly & Service, Part 1
Transcript
Hello everyone. This is Jim from International Camera Technicians. Today we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to [disassemble] a [Nikon] F3. This is a pretty beat and battered F3. I picked it up off the internet. We’re going to do [the repairs] in a few parts. [In this video] we’re going to take it apart. We’re going to fix what’s wrong with it.
The only thing I’ve done to this camera is to give it a quick once over. I’ve taken a look at it. It’s got somebody who’s been in here, kind of messing around with a big chip taken out of this part here. [It’s] missing a screw. I don’t know why. Someone probably took it for something. The seals are shot, [the] seals need to be [re-]done. Looks like the leatherette was peeled [off] at one point. The button of course is ready to fall out. We’ll take care of that at some point. I’ll probably pull the whole front out of this thing.
CLA and speed checks
First of all, what I’m going to do is give [the Nikon F3] a CLA. And how I do a CLA:
- I’m going to go in [and] I’m going to clean the magnet
- I’m going to clean the speed dial over here Not speeds dial, but the ASA dial and…
- I’m going to check on the bottom see what ugliness is down there.
- We got this [viewfinder] to clean up. There’s a lot of things to do on this camera.
I did a speed check. This is on half a second and it’s just releasing so this thing is not holding any speeds whatsoever. I don’t know why the second curtain magnet is not holding. I’m going to check that out see if we can repair that.
Without too much more yapping, we’re going to get right into it.
Pull off the prism and check the bottom
I’m going to pull the prism off. Set it aside. It’s got a cool screen; I like the grid screen. So I’ll go ahead and get my grid screen out of there. Put that up to the side.
Alright, so my first job — I always like to check and see what it looks like under the bottom. Everything goes down to the bottom. So, if the bottom’s all messed up, then I know someone’s been into it. So that screw [comes out] , if there’s a screw here, that would [come out].
You don’t have to take the cover off. The cover was missing on mine.
Take off this screw here for the motor drive coupler. It’s just on a keyed shaft. Pull that [black leather layer] off and [peeling noise} — it’s pretty common to hear that. And out [the bottom] comes.
Put the motor-drive coupler back in
I go ahead and put [the motor drive coupler] back on. On some cameras that gear underneath there can actually raise back up and then next thing you know, the clear does some weird stuff and you’re wondering why. It’s not a big deal if it does; you just have to re-time it. It’s not really hard to re-time.
It looks to me like we’ll probably end up pulling the front on this one. I’m right-handed so I always put [tools] over [to the right]. If I see something, I’m going to tend to pick it up right away.
Remove the speeds dial
Alrighty — so I know I don’t have any speeds. Just no speeds whatsoever. This is [set to] one second and that’s not [opening] at one second. I’ll go ahead and take the speeds dial off. [Take] the whole side over here off. [Uses a small screwdriver to peel off the leatherette around the speeds dial.]
There are three set screws [under the leatherette]. Europeans like to call them “grub” screws. [They’re] pretty small, and they don’t really want to come off. That [screw] doesn’t want to come off. We’ll get them in a second here. [I’m] putting a drop of acetone on [the stuck screw]. (Let me see if I have a better screwdriver; that’s probably a better one.) That [screwdriver slips off the screw head suddenly] happens. But it wasn’t my finger. There we go [it comes loose].
Yeah, I’ve jammed screwdrivers in my fingers before.
Okay, that [dial] comes off. There’s always a spring down the middle. That [spring] need to come [out]. [Next remove the] e-ring, I just pull one side, working it around, then go to the other side, work it on up. Once it’s up a little bit, it just comes right off, no big deal.
This [metal ring] needs to come out. It’s got one little cut out, right there. So that little kick out there needs to go into the cut out, otherwise it doesn’t come off.
Remove the winding lever
[Using a small cloth, Jim presses down on the] winding lever. They’re fairly tight, most of them. But they’re not too bad.
Okay, the ring comes off. The button and spring comes off. This sometimes comes with this — this is the plunger and there is a brass collar. There it is. That’s oxidized pretty bad[ly]. I think that’s what I’m going to find — I’m going to find a lot of oxidation on all the contacts. And [that’s why] it’s not working.
[The viewfinder] screw comes off.
Take the wind lever off. [There are] four screws; these are short. Little short screws; conical head screws. Okay, it’s off.
Remove the multiple exposure lever
This is your multi-exposure lever that needs to come off. I use these, [which] are round-nosed pliers. I’ve been using them for years. They’ve been shaped with the Dremel [drill], so they come to nice little strong points.
Remove the on/off switch
I want to take this [on/off switch] off. This is actually the on and off switch. It’s amazing how people don’t know this is an on/off switch. There it is; it finally moved. Wow, that’s tight! Something weird is going on with it. I think it’s broken; we’ll have to replace that.
Once [on/off switches] start to move, they’re usually good after that. You just have to break them free. This one’s always awkward. I thought at some point to make a tool for it, but never got around to it. This one here — you do have to be careful. If you slip, you’re going to scratch the body. People don’t like it when you scratch their camera.
[Looking at the underside of the on/off switch] Alright, I don’t see anything that looks broken, just a little bit of rust. I think this is what I’m going to be dealing with. It just basically needs attention.
Remove the on/off switch
Okay, so that ring comes off. It’s just a bunch of dirt [points to dirt] and you can see all the dirt — wow —so we can go ahead and we can take off this front ring. You can see right there, there is some glue. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to dissolve the glue on it. [Uses Q-tip with solvent.] Just go along that rim. [Pulls out small ball-peen hammer] I’m going to give it a very light tap. Sorry about if [the camera] is vibrating a bit. It probably is.) alright yeah, I didn’t even need the grippy glove that’s out.
Remove the on/off switch
Alright everything’s done [to prepare for the top removal] on this. This [top] can come up. Sometimes they want to stick down, so I tend to get over here under the body [with a screwdriver] and just kind of like start persuading it to come up. Careful not to scratch it. There, there we go. That’s out. Ugly nasty looking.
[Looking over the camera] Alright what do we have here? Nothing that looks like really horrible.
Remove the on/off switch
We’re going to get the speeds out of the way. We’re going to go ahead and put the wind lever back on because we’re going to have to wind and release, so I might as well [put the lever back on] now.
Now, I know it takes four screws, but out of the four, only two screws are really needed. Probably just one, but go ahead and put that [screw] down in. Okay, [adding the second screw] so there we go. That’s on.
Put the collar down. Put the shaft in there and put in the release assembly. At least I can release the camera and there we go. We got it in self-timer mode] right now. Voilà!
Check the speed magnet
The speed is in; bring it to around one second and [testing] — that’s not one second. Okay so let’s take a look at this magnet over here and see why we’re not getting a one second.
I’m going to keep those [screws] separate from the winding [screws] because that’s a much bigger screw. I’ll be careful; I just lay that [magnet] over here. When you wind, you wind here, you release — boom [shutter clicks]. That’s “B”; your “B” lever is here. Click that out. There— it releases.
This [hinge] almost always keeps it out until you go into “B”, and — boom — it kicks it. If you have this off and it doesn’t release on your speed, just kick that out.
Remove the winding base plate
[Removing the] winding base plate is not a big deal, except I’m going to need a soldering iron for it.
We’ve got one screw here, let’s get this [screw] out. It’s tight there; that’s the tightest screw I’ve come across so far. These are all pretty tight, so nobody’s been into this section here.
That [speed magnet] can dangle; just be careful. I always just let it dangle.
I’m just trying to get my soldering iron up to temperature. It takes a little longer on this one, I just have to come and de-solder this wire right here [under the winding lever].
We pull [the back] open. You pull this up, it loves to get caught on this little piece of plastic. Push the plastic out of the way.
Alright, slowly wobble [the winding mechanism] out. This is connected into the shaft. Some of these, on the old ones, actually have a full piece of metal right here with a hole drilled in it and that slips down over the shaft, so you’ve got to take everything off. But this one’s a newer style, so that’s good.
Clean the second curtain release magnet
Your release magnet is there. The second curtain release magnet is there. To get to it, take this screw out here. Take the blade off, take a look down [inside]. Generally, I’m looking to see how all this looks. It actually looks in really good shape.
[The] timing switch is up in here and there’s also one down in here. Let’s clean the magnet. Make sure this magnet is working correctly. On any service I always do this — I use alcohol. I use denatured alcohol. I use something that doesn’t burn plastic because that’s plastic. I go ahead and I clean this.
The other thing is, this [coil could be bad too. It could have a bad coil in there, and so no matter what, we’re not going to get any speeds.
Put the winding plate and winding lever back on
Let’s put the plate back on. Hopefully that was the problem. Two things are going to go here, you got cutouts here; that drives, that’s driven from here. That cutout drives the counter, so cut out there. That’s got the rod with the pin through it.
The anti–backup is here. That’s got to go into that little slot, that pin. Other than that, there’s nothing else you need to worry about. Oh except for the counter engagement pin is here. Push that all the way back. It’s going to hit here, so I always wrap it around the post first. Make sure that guy’s going to fall in. This guy almost always falls in, but sometimes you just have to rotate it just a little bit and make sure the pin over here is going to push your counter.
Test the speed
Once you’re all sure of that, let it sit down. Put a few screws in. [Jim tests the shutter], it charged. In a second, we’re going to see if this thing actually has a speed. Oh — there’s a speed. So really all we had was a bunch of junk all over the second curtain magnet. Now we have speeds, so we can get exposures.
That was pretty much it, and this doesn’t happen every time. A lot of times, I see bad switches over here, and down under here.
Other issues can cause it not to run speeds. This one just happened to be kind of an easy one. I usually clean those [magnets] because they usually give — instead of no speeds — they usually give very erratic speeds. [For example] you’ll get like, instead of one second, you get a half second and it just doesn’t work very well.
Nice. It’s a nice sounding camera. I’m going to put a pause on it right at this moment because I don’t want my video to run too long and then we’ll do a bunch of stitching on videos.