Rant: Tried to fix a sticky shutter and made it worse

I was working on a Pentax K1000 last Saturday and the shutter was sticking at slow speeds. Thought I'd clean the blades with a little lighter fluid like I've done before. But I put too much on and it got into the mirror mechanism. Now the mirror won't lock up at all. Lost a full repair job because of that mistake. Anyone else have a fix go totally sideways and cost you more than just time?

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2 Comments

the_jenny4mo ago

That lighter fluid is sneaky stuff man. I did the same thing on a Minolta SRT-101 last year, used a q-tip with maybe one drop too much and it wicked all the way down into the prism housing. Took me three full days to disassemble the whole top plate and clean it out with alcohol wipes. The mirror box on those old Pentaxes is like a sponge for that fluid once it gets past the baffles.

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brookebailey4mo ago

Three full days? That's insane, I would have just chunked the whole camera out the window by hour two. @the_jenny, you've got way more patience than me, that's for sure.

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