Mamiya 7: Wind Locked by Fallen Self Timer LED Cover
Originally posted on Instagram. Notes from the repair bench, kept here as a searchable archive. View the original on Instagram
Some repairs require a lot of troubleshooting/disassembly to properly diagnose what the issue could be and the repair itself may be trivial. Other problems are immediately visible but may require a bit of work to resolve. The second situation is what I show here.
The camera arrived with the advance lever locked up as visible in the first photo. Also visible in the photo is the missing self timer LED red cover. What has obviously happened is that the cover has come unglued from inside and fallen into the wind gears as it is located very close to the gears.
On removing the top cover I immediately see this LED cover stuck somewhere it should not be as seen in photo two. Somehow it migrated to this area and while it was easy to remove, the winding system was still not moving. Close examination of the cover as seen in photo three shows that it is almost intact with just a tiny bit of one corner missing. Obviously this bit is someone it should not be. After searching all the gears, I see that it is stuck in one of the teeth as shown in photo four. After careful removal (I put a dab of grease on it before pulling it out as I did not want it to free fall deeper into the wind mechanism) all is well with the wind system. Photo four shows the cover with the plastic corner that was recovered in the gears. The very tiny smaller parts were ground up and came out as bits of sand.
Another complaint on the camera was that the meter did not work. Again, the cause was easily seen: The lens is the 65mm which very commonly has a broken flex cable and this will cease communication between the body and lens and cause the meter to not work. That was the case here. Fixable with a new cable.
