Nikon FE2: Mirror Box Removal

Transcript

Hello everybody this is Jim from International Camera Techs. Hopefully you watched me pull the top and the bottom. This is an FE2, a nice little camera. We should get it going, we’re going pull the front out of this today and then probably another video we’ll do where we pull the blades out and clean all the blades up. I like to pull the fronts when I get these because there’s usually so much junk inside them and it just all needs to get cleaned up, otherwise I sell them and they come back to me. So I like things when I sell them to go out. And if I don’t do a thorough job, then they come back and people are mad at me and I’m not too happy. So we’re going to go ahead, pull the front, strip the leatherettes out of it, strip the leatherettes off, pull the front, take all the screws off. Unsolder everything that needs being soldered, looks like a lot of wires; not really. They’re pretty straightforward if you know which wires to take off now.

Pulling off the fronts:

What I’m going to do, these are going to be kind of an issue through here. Nobody’s ever been into this one, nobody’s had the front off, and the plastic is still over these solder connections. I kind of like to scrape these a little bit. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s plastic coating on these, makes it a little bit difficult for the soldering iron to get onto the solder and melt it. It’s got a plastic covering don’t worry about how pretty it is we’ll make sure that looks much better later.

Unsoldering and pulling off the front plate:

So what you want to do is go ahead and first take these two wires; one’s a black, one’s a green. So these two guys come out, let’s go ahead and put that back, okay.

This plate needs to come off, we got three screws, one, two, three. Two round-headed ones, a flat head screw always goes in the front here. Pull that off. [Gesturing with screwdriver] These are the contacts for the ASA.

Open up the ASA contact assembly:

There’s your ASA contact assembly. Go ahead and take these two screws out. These are shorter screws and the ones above. Go down and put the shorter screws back in, alright.

Peel the leatherettes:

So, I’ll go ahead and do this. I’m just going to peel the leatherettes, no reason not to. So I just got a edge of a screwdriver underneath, peel all the way down that edge so when it goes back I’ll have a nice little edge. It’s not all messed up. If the leatherette looks ugly, it’s because the edge is not glued down right.

Remove the self-timer Lever:

Okay. That’s for the self-timer. I like to take the self-timer lever off. Some people don’t. It’s not particularly difficult. There’s some corrosion, so I’m glad I took that off. Alright, pull the leatherette off.

Replace the Self-Timer Lever:

Now put this guy back on, it stops this self-timer lever. I don’t know what you want to call it, a kicker, stud, whatever from falling in once you pull the front out. So it’s just a matter of holding everything in place.

Peel the other leatherette:

Latch right under here, screwdriver under, pull that, latch opens. Since I don’t have any rewind knob in there, go along the edge. Peel that up. Leatherette out. Two screws are gonna’ be there.

Unsolder remaining wires for ASA assembly:

So now I get the leatherettes out, I can go ahead and unsolder. So what we’re gonna’ go ahead and do is unsolder this red wire. So we got the red wire here. Down underneath here we tucked away in the corner, I don’t know if anybody can see it, a black wire, that black wire needs to come out. On this board here, two white wires. Don’t worry about exact orientation because they just go to the same point. Alright, yellow wire on top needs to come out. Leave the red one on top, just the yellow. Okay these two blue wires up to the sync here, both need to come out. Over here you’ve got a white one. The white wire is jammed up right there and then a purple —uh sorry orange — one right down in here. Go ahead and get the white and we’ll move across and get the orange. You’re not able to see, but that is orange.

Unsolder wires:

Okay, so what we want to do then. Take out these, this is where sometimes, maybe you don’t want the wind lever on. It’s right there, it’s plastic. If you touch with the soldering iron, it’s going to melt, looks ugly but we’ll see. Red’s gone. First wire in, is that green. you should get a black in, third wire. The last one is a blue. It was buried underneath there. There it is. That should be all the wires unless I forgot one.

Move unneeded wires out of the way:

I got the white and the orange [wires]. I just tend to pull them through. It’s going underneath, out to the front there. There were the two over here just pull them out, they go to your switches up over here alright. We’re all set. Okay so, get the blue wire out of the way.

Accessing the meter:

There’s that screw in the back. Go ahead and take that one out. Have a long, longish screw there. Go ahead and get this out of the way. Take out two of these, two out of three on the meter. The meter is under here. This one I pull all the way and then I go down about two turns. And just keep it there that way the meter doesn’t flop around. I don’t want the meter really to pull out.

If it does, it can get bent. It’s just an easier way to do it without damaging the meter or the scale. There’s a meter scale, it has all the speeds on it. You don’t want to bend that and get it all messed up.

Remove the front:

Alright, so we got front screws into one, there should be five of them on the front. Three on that side, one, two, just behind the self-timer, three, got four, five. Now this side. Alright. If I didn’t miss anything that should be it. This front should be ready to come out and it is. Boom. Okay there we go. Yellow hooked on that wire. Pull gently just in case you forgot to disconnect something or something gets hooked. So alright, we’re in.

Review the seals:

So, when people say they do seals, very few people do this seal unless they’re pulling the front. I mean that thing I think it’s just disgusting. So that’s shot! So that has to be replaced.

Check shutter brake:

Otherwise the shutter looks good. What am I looking for in the shutter, I’m looking for this brake system. They tend to break right here, the brake breaks. They break right at that point right there. So if you do, this little metal piece goes running around in there and that spring flops everywhere.

Check general cleanliness of the shutter and mirror box:

Shutter, second curtain magnet right in there. We’ll get to the shutter when we pull it out later. Generally I’m looking for anything that may be kind of nasty with them. But it looks pretty clean. I think this will be a pretty nice little shutter to go over.

And then the mirror box. There’s almost always a ton in here, junk, Q-tips, Q-tip hair usually. Alright, it looks in pretty good shape.

There’s your meter sitting right there, I didn’t want to pull it out so it’s still held on by the front. There’s no reason to pull it out unless you actually have to service the meter and this meter was actually working so it shouldn’t be a problem. So I was pulling the front out of it. Didn’t take too long. I know I’ve done this for a while so it’s pretty easy for me but you know, take your time if you’re going to do something like this. Thank you for watching!

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And this is Jim, so, look for the next video.

Take care, bye.