Spent 6 hours fixing a jammed shutter on a Pentax K1000 - ended up being a bent screw

I got this old Pentax K1000 in last Tuesday. Shutter was stuck halfway and I figured it was just dirty curtains. Tore it down, cleaned everything, put it back together - still jammed. Wasted almost a full afternoon before I noticed one of the little screws holding the mirror box was bent just enough to catch the mechanism. Swapped it out for a new screw and it fired perfect. Anyone else ever had a tiny part like that totally waste your time?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannahw3026d ago

3 bent screws and 2 stripped phillips heads later I'm convinced camera manufacturers do this on purpose lol. Had a similar issue with a Ricoh KR-10 where the rewind knob screw was like 0.5mm too long and kept scraping the inside of the mirror box. Spent three evenings chasing that ghost until I literally held the screw next to another one and went "oh you're a chunky boy." Love that the tiniest metal gremlins can ruin your whole week.

josephl6726d ago

yeah I had basically the exact same thing happen with a minolta x-700 a few years back. turned out one of the little screws holding the film advance lever was like a hair too long and it kept catching on the shutter release pin. drove me crazy for a whole weekend until I noticed it. sometimes it's the smallest dumbest thing that takes forever to find.