My whole view on CLA vs replacement flipped after a $40 find

Last month I grabbed a beat-up Canon FD 50mm for $40 at a garage sale in Tulsa, figured I'd practice a full tear down and CLA it. Three days of work later it still had a sticky aperture, and I nearly tossed it until a retired repair guy told me to check the aperture ring ball bearing first, that thing was half worn down, replacing it cost me $0.31 and fixed everything. Anyone else ever sink hours into a deep clean when the real issue was a tiny mechanical part?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly.nora20d ago

And that ball bearing story hits hard because it makes you realize how many hours we burn on cleaning when the real fix is just a worn piece of hardware. Once you learn to check the tiny bits before the big tear down, you save yourself a whole weekend. I've got a drawer of lenses that I "fixed" with a CLA but they still had some weird quirk, and now I'm convinced half of them just needed a $2 spring or a new detent. The worst part is you can't even blame yourself, the manual never mentions these parts because they assume they'll outlast the lens. It's like the hobby is really about learning which small parts die first on each model, and that's the secret knowledge nobody puts in the repair books.

patricia_green2120d ago

Wow, a $2 spring over a whole CLA? That's crazy! I mean I get it, but it still blows my mind how much time we waste on the glamour work when it's the boring junk that actually causes the problem.