Nikon FE2 Reassembly
Transcript
Hello everyone, this is Jim from International Camera Technicians, and I am here to start putting this FE2 back together.
What this video will cover
I took this part probably about a month or so ago; it’s just been sitting here. I’ve been very busy, so I haven’t been able to get around to putting it back together. So, in this video what we will do is go ahead and put the front in, and I’ll put the shutter in, of course. We’ll get it all wired up and then we will check to see if it actually releases, and the magnet works, and the shutter is doing what it should do and then I think I’ll make a separate video on adjusting it because that takes a while.
So we’ll do an adjustment and then put the top on the type of video as well, let’s get moving!
Charge and check the shutter release
So first of all let’s go ahead and take my body at the top out of the way, take the body, let’s get the shutter in. So it has been a while, the shutter looks like it’s been released. Bottom charge it, release. Okay, good. If I held the magnet right there — boom — when I release that with that out of the way, there, that should release them.
A word of caution
Just charge it enough to latch, don’t need to charge it any more than that because the camera’s not going to charge it anymore than that but if you come and I got my finger on it right now I could take this thing and I could pull it that way a little bit further. It would over charge this system and it will just get stuck. And it’s kind of a pain to get it unstuck but yeah it gets stuck with this little lever down under here so just watch that about being too brutal with these things.
Insert the shutter
Alright so the felt is just a light trap, so no big deal in putting the shutter in this one’s a little different than the FEs and this is an FE2 so people like to say the FM2 or FE2 and the FEs are similar, NO! Totally different, very different piece.
Alright so we get the brass screw, not sure why they put a brass screw in there, but they did so it goes there. This is actually a Phillips head, and that tends to go right there. Long screw goes in the back in the film chamber. Open up the film chamber and it goes right there, put that in there, screw it down and these I can tighten up But the FEs don’t tighten that one up.
Alright anyways we’ll do an FE at some point because they’re a little bit trickier.
Unlatch the winding system
Alright so what I got here I have to unlatch the winding system. Pulls it out right there, allowing me to wind charge the shutter. Release is down there — boom. Okay once again charge the shutter, and if I push this down, which is the release button — boom — it’ll hold until I let go.
Potential Problem 1
So everything seems to be working fine. Two sources of problems with this camera tend to be this guy here, not pulling or not dropping in, so if it gets stuck out here it’s just gonna wind, wind, wind. So if you ever get one that just winds on and on and on, it’s this or the catch, which is right here. That catch is worn out and so it just skips right off it.
Potential Problem 2
Okay the other source of issues (and I’ll take it so you can have a good look at it), take this off, okay. Nice guy right here in the corner. Okay, he can be a big source of problems.
See he flips down like that and he’s clearing that tip, but if it’s slow and it hangs, this is not gonna’ come back. See, it comes back but if that comes over and it just doesn’t flip all the way down or hesitates. It’s going to jam.
You tend to see that more when you have things like when you’re charging fast, or you have a motor drive on it.
If it’s not working fast and quick when you put a motor drive on it, it will jam your motor drive. This thing just will not work even though you’ll take it off the motor drive. It’ll work great, put it on the motor drive and it doesn’t work.
And this is a big culprit to it, this guy’s got to move fast and easy.
And it does and that’s an eccentric right there if you can see there you can see it’s thin here and fat over here. That’s an eccentric, so as you move that around, this guy’s going to move back and forth so you need it where it just clears and falls back into its zero position, and it comes back.
You can see it kind of do its ratcheting thing. So now what it does is an anti-back up, anti-back up and then it just, there you go. So those can be little sources of problems on this camera, on a lot of the Nikons actually, especially this guy down under there it’s fairly easy to get to and didn’t take a lot.
Put the screws back in
We’ll go ahead with the screw back in. I like to put a little bit, these screws are glued in, you can see there’s a ton of glue in there. I don’t add any more glue. Usually, I chip it out but also I like to put just a touch of acetone on there, now when I screw it in there I think the glue kind of like goes wet again and then will stick.
Anyway, that screw is never coming out. I never had a problem with that screw coming out. Okay, so this guy’s ready to go.
Oil key points and check mirror action
You didn’t see it but essentially I’ve hit oil on a number of these points to get them all nice and lubed and I think this guy is all ready to go.
I like to check this lever here to see if he’s nice and fast. That’s another source of problems. If you charge, and your mirror goes up, it’s probably this lever. See if I hold this lever out of the way and go up, mirror just flipped up.
Okay, release the mirror. The mirror’s starting to go up because this guy is not coming back. It should be fast and should be quick and you should have no problems with that.
Alright this is also over through here you have these two here. Those have to be also nice and move freely. Your latch is there, never have a real problem with the kick down latch.
Add seal across the back
Alright so, I like to charge the shutter when I put the front in and keep the mirror box uncharged. I’m not sure exactly what Nikon says about it now.
Also before I put the front in, I want to put my seal across the back here. You see I ripped it up, no seal. I did cut some seal material here. Alright, all the way up to this guy here, kind of push it in a little bit so there is no gap and then just roll it across, it stops light from coming down the back side of the eyepiece and then back side of the shutter, causing all kinds of nasty little streaks.
Alright so that’s in. Doesn’t have to be a pretty job, it just has to go in.
Put the front in
Go ahead and pull the wires out, get them out of the way. Those in the back there. There, alright, it looks like we’re all set and —oh, I released the shutter, not a big deal — go ahead and put it in. I just kind of wobble it into place. It’s not a real big trick to get in front of this one.
Remove the front plate
I need to get the plate off. Should have taken this plate off because I need to see underneath the plate and there’s a little fork. If you can see, that needs to go in between. Boom — you feel the front fall in a little bit more. There we go, that’s kind of down. Now, If you put this on the wrong side, this should be over here like that.
Okay, so this is behind this, this is a charging lever, so if we go here, we should charge the shutter and the mirror box and it should latch and it latched in the forward position.
I should be able to push this down, it should release — boom! Mirror up, shutter down.
You got a sticky rubber bumper that I’ve got to get out of there too. Alright so that’s it, it’s pretty simple; this was.
Charged or not?
I’ve put it in so many different positions with it charged, with it uncharged. On the FE2, it doesn’t really matter that much. It’s so easy to get back in the timing. This was actually a pretty slick little camera, so it doesn’t really tend to give you a lot of problems. So anyways, this is in, let me go ahead, get a few screws and keep the front together.
Stiff self-timer
Something feels strange right in there though, oh my self-timer.
Yeah I’m thinking the self-timer; it’s like catching. It’s very stiff; what’s making the self-time lever stiff?
Alright — so I’m not liking that my self-timing lever is just really stiff; now it’s getting better, but I’ve loosened that up. Maybe we have some junk in there. Yeah, okay so now it’s feeling better, I’m going to go ahead and take this off maybe it needs a drop of oil. Look at that, yeah, that’s what just a bunch of corrosion all around it.
My fancy, dancy un-corrosionizer that on there and let it work a little bit. [Some on the] back side of here too, yep.
So let’s clean that up, get that all off, so Ill put a drop off oil just off to the side where you can’t see it. Boom, Boom, put too much n there, yeah so much better.
Boom; here we go.
Finish putting front on
Alright, let’s put another screw. Opposite side — it should release. The camera’s making a liar out of me. Beautiful. Okay so I had to do a little fiddling to get down. It finally went, get this screw back in here. Okay, Nice, pull this back, charge it, timer, mirror up. Should run through. Voilá.
Using graphite oil
So, if you’re wondering what I put oil-wise on that it is actually something called graphite oil. I don’t use a tremendous amount, but it does work in certain situations.
Insert the meter
Alright so, let’s go ahead, get the wire, should be a white wire down here. These are going to be your backs. These are going to go up onto the circuit board. Skip this guy down. Start putting this all together, get my soldering iron on voilá.
Okay so we’ll do is sit this down and I like to look inside and line that up straight. There’s no reason to put your meter in crooked. It’s simple enough to set it up straight. Looking through the viewfinder, it’s straight. It doesn’t look like one end poking out further than the other and what we’re going to do.
Close that up and we’ll start to wire this thing. Alright you do this here get this down, okay. Take two small screws; I will worry about the rest of the screws later.
There’s no reason, just no reason to jam a bunch of screws in when they’re really not needed yet. Plus, if I made a mistake, there’s fewer screws to take out. These two are kind of short.
So what I’m going to do — let’s see if I can find it — we’ll just use the —oops, too big.
Add flux and solder the wire points
I have some flux. Hit some of the points with my flux now. This has been about a month since I took this apart, so hopefully I remember all the points that need to be hit.
There should be a black wire down here; I usually just flux things up. Solder doesn’t flow very well. [It’s] surprising how many people do not use flux on the soldering. It doesn’t take a lot to do it. I’ll put a nice little blob across the back here on all these points. Don’t forget these two up here.
Alright, I’ll flip these [wires] out of the way. So the white ones [wires] are going to go here.
What’s going on with my soldering iron? Nice and warm? Yep. I haven’t used a soldering iron for a while, I think the tip is a little bit [scratched up]. It’s not looking too good.
Okay there we go. If you don’t have a good tip on your soldering iron, it doesn’t like to the solder. Unfortunately, right now I’m kind of guilty of that. It’s not the best soldering tip right now.
So this one’s double [wire point], so you put on one, the other one wants to pull up. Blah blah blah, okay. [The] red [wire] goes down under here by this big capacitor. Okay. That’s your power.
The black one should be in here somewhere. Oh yeah, get my finger on it. That one’s kind of difficult to get to. It should be right down here at the base of this little hybrid IC, or the adjustment pop board. Let me go in there, got that one, nice one. The two grays [wires] —they are your flash sync.
I know it may seem I’m fussy with my wires, but you need to get wires correct. Pinching a wire will cause all kinds of nasty things in your circuit board.
Sorry you can’t really see what I’m doing, but I’m trying to get these two wires to stay together at the point I want them to stay together. Okay, there we go. YAY!
A little solder, ok. As soon as I bent them down, they separated. Okay, good enough for you two [wires]. Alright, yellow [wire] goes up at the top here. This green [wire] and this brown [wire] here — the green and the brown go to a switch that is on this guy [metal plate].
Put metal plate on
This guy goes in, in no particular direction. There’s no timing. Put it down, [it’s a] round headed screw. [Insert a second] round-headed [screw]. And for some reason, Nikon put a flathead in the front. That’s where those two [wires] are gonna’ go; I don’t really need them to go [in] right now.
Continue soldering the wires
So what we have here is green first. So green’s going to go down in here. It’s close It’s tight. You don’t want to melt these wires when you’re doing it. Come on you. That’s in. Okay, red [wire] goes [to the right], black [wire] goes [to the right of the red], yellow [wire] next. Come on. The last one [wire] is blue, light blue.
I’m gonna’ put the screw in the back here. It should be here. It is unscrewed by the eyepiece. Tighten it down. Alright, these two guys [wires] go inside; thread them underneath the little flecks that go in there. Orange [wire] goes this little spot right here and white [wire] goes under there. The red wire out of the way (ouch). There we go.
Check the power
Okay, so I got a couple screws in this. Let’s go ahead and see if this thing has good electrical power. Check the battery cap; [it] looks really clean. Put that [tool] underneath, through my battery cap. These [the tool] were nice. We used to be able to buy them, [but we] can’t get them anymore.
Now see, those always get bent up. Your fingers always touch them and they get bent up. I’m putting this to my counter here. Alright, so what we got here. We’ve got power. This [is set to] one second. Nice. Sounds weird because I got this bumper up top is super sticky and I didn’t clean it out yet. I’ll clean it out at any time. It gives a kind of delay with the return of the mirror.
I know some of you will say, “Oh my god, you’re pushing all that junk in.” I’ve been doing it for so long it doesn’t really matter. Never have a problem, but some of you may have problems if this foam falls into the shutter especially just after you cleaned it. Yeah, it could be an issue. Get in there and have to redo everything but I haven’t had too many problems. Doesn’t mean you won’t, but I don’t. Alright. Ok.
Clean the mirror and add last screws
Let’s get some of this off the mirror. It’s making nice little clanking sound, but it’s working. So we got slow speeds if you get slow speeds you usually get high speeds so I’m not too worried about it.
I’ll go ahead and finishing putting in the screws this one here. Okay that should be a long screw in here somewhere. There it is and that’s for the front of the meter. Go ahead, do a little bit of cleanup. This thing is basically ready at this point for adjustment.
Put ASA dial on
To do adjustment I’m going to have to set up on a different area. What I’ll do is I’ll finish up by putting on my ASA getting it ready to go into adjustment I need the two at least a screw to hold this plate down.
I put that down and then get my ASA dial which is here. Align it through to the coupling hole there, which is this little slot. I don’t know if you can see it well, but on the camera there to the pin. It’ll give you your ASA. Rotate it around. I just like to put, you can leave it there, but I do like to put the plate on just to keep it down. If I have to move it around it’s not going to fall off on me. And there we go.
Test the speed
I still haven’t soldered up these two wires to the comp. It’s not that big of a deal to solder them up. You can wait to the very end. Now what we want to do is make sure my wiring is out of the way and it’s not going to get pinched. This guy [grey wire] needs to come up. All these guys [green, yellow, and red wires] need to tuck a little bit of it down into here. The ones that go to this plate up here. The two, the orange and the white [wires], I like to pull through so it makes it nice and kind of tight over here. That way when you slide the top on, it’s not gonna’ pinch this area.
Up here you’ll see there’s slack in the wires; you can usually get the and just kind of tuck them underneath there and then they sit down kind of nicely over here. Over here is another area where you want to just zip it around. It’s kind of like going boom,boom, boom.
There we go and that’ll be enough. These guys [wires] get bent you need to kind of bring them up a little bit. This guy gets bent, so you bring it down a little bit. Look all good. Auto speed. If I put my hand in front of there, should be slower. And now let’s see — do I have a [lens] cap? Put a lens on real quick, stop it way down, and it should be a slow shutter speed. Perfect.
Alright, so this guy is basically ready for adjustment. Everything seems to be working and that [adjustment] will be my next video.
Thanks for watching
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Thank you for watching. I appreciate it and look forward to my next video where I’ll go ahead and adjust this.
Take care, bye!