Skip to content

Nikon F3: Repair from Tamper Damage, Part 4

Transcript

Okay, so what I’m going to do now on this F3, is take care of this little piece. There’s a piece here. It looks broken. I’m not sure how big that piece is, we’re going to get it out and put in a new one. I don’t like that someone’s [been] messing around with that.

Remove the film canister plate

Go ahead and take this screw out here.  I don’t know exactly what’s going to come out — sometimes it comes out as an assembly; sometimes little parts slide out. We’ll see how that all goes together in a second.

You have the brass ring that holds it down. That slides in like that and the brass ring goes over the top. Sometimes when you take these out the brass ring is stuck on there and everything comes out so there’s a stud under here too. [It’s] very tight.

Tool tip:

I should have my pointy tweezers. Okay, one, two, three; all have different jobs.

Alright so that [stud] fits in like that to hold everything down.

Detach the battery

I’m going to go ahead and de-solder my battery — there and there. I’m going to take my battery out just so it doesn’t short out. There we go.

Remove the spring and receiver

So under here [the plate], there’s a — it’s kind of pain [to get out] — a spring. I don’t like that spring very much. [It always fights me. [That’s the] receiver.

Remove the broken motor drive

The broken piece is this piece here. Let’s get it out of the way.

Alright, so this piece here is for your motor drive and when the power comes in here, it gets transferred here and this is hitting the circuit board, then your camera gets power. When the motor drive presses down on this it now takes power from the motor drive.

So it’s just like kind of swapping back-and-forth from the camera battery power to the motor drive power. These things go bad, and people think the board is bad and all you got to do is clean these switches and — boom! — you’re done. Alright so if that made any sense.

Replace with a new motor drive

Go ahead and replace this. I anticipated it being broken and there’s a new one so put that in. That rim is broken off right here, so this is just a piece of junk. Get out of the way, so go ahead and put this [new] one back in. We’ll put this one in. So just put it in there, set it. We need to get the hole lined up here at the circuit board too.

There, I can see.

Replace the receiver and spring

Okay, so this guy needs to come in, it’s got a cut out. I know you’re not going to be able to see it. But way down here there’s a cutout; it’s going to sit in there. Well, this spring decides it wants to move around. Yeah, not my favorite thing to do. This has just always been a big pain; it’s always been difficult. I’m going to de-solder this up over here. [De-soldering] get me that extra flip up on the circuit board. I rarely replace this part. This part almost never, but I do have a bunch in stock. I bought a bunch of parts; I don’t know why there were so many of these. I rarely replace them.

I’m going to try this [squashes spring flat with tweezers]. Make sure it [the spring] is sitting right. [It’s] not. Seriously, I mean, I’ve been doing this for years. There we go. Finally!

Replace the stud, insulator, and cover plate; re-solder battery

Alright, so we’ll go ahead and put the stud in here. Tighten that up. Alright. Let’s see, putting the insulator on. Put the brass nut on.

Alright — solder up to two wires for the battery chamber. Put that back sitting down.

Okay, solder that wire, put the ground on it. [The] battery is in; it should work. Alright, so got all that done.

Replace covers

I’m going to go ahead and do and start putting the top covers on and then we’re going to get down we’re going to do the adjustments on. You pull back your leatherette so you can see where all the adjustments are.

I didn’t take the leather off. Pull the back, there’s all my adjustments. Okay, there’s also some under here, that’s why this is probably falling off. Someone doesn’t know how to clean and use their glue correctly. There’s three more over here. So, definitely, someone pulled the front on this. This is not factory wiring. What they went into it for originally, I don’t know but it’s all working great.

I’m going to go ahead and stop the video and we’re going to go and then do another video and putting the covers back on and doing the adjustments. I might do adjustments separately because this is — this one’s an F3 — [which] can be quite extensive. I don’t like to do more than I have to.

I’ll check on the machine and find out exactly what it’s going to need and do the adjustment as needed.

Thank you for watching. Go ahead and subscribe if you would. I appreciate any comments down below.

If you want me to do an F3, I can pull the front out of it at some point, who knows maybe I’ll just offer somebody if they send me in one to do a video, 50% off the labor type of thing. And I’ll pull the front out of it, but I always think why pull the front if you don’t have to. It’s just a waste of time.

I did find this has got a crack across it. I will replace that, you don’t need to watch it, it’s just two screws it can come out. No big deal. Goes in from the bottom. That’s pretty much it. I have a few other little parts here that can go in on this camera and like I said, thank you for watching, take care. Bye.