This is taken directly from my facebook page, just a small story from yesterday that makes me want to check all those bricked cameras I still have stored in my attic.
(3.Juli 2019) Still
too awake to sleep after all the dust spot removal, so here's a little ebay story that also happened today - I again couldn't resist to buy a camera a few days ago. It was one of those risky
opportunities, totally cheap but "I don't know this, no idea if it works" auctions. But I totally fell in love with those small old Pentax cameras a while ago, basically the M line, I think they
were some of the smallest SLRs of that time period,
smaller than Olympus OM-1 etc... anyway, very basic, very pretty, super lightweight, I already have a ME but wanted a black body and found a dirt cheap Pentax MV1. So, yeah, won the auction for 8
Euros - including shipping.
Today it arrived and, of course, it was dead. The usual thing, advance lever doesn't advance anything, it's just hanging around, mirror stayed up, no shutter. I was a little pissed but then
shrugged it off... 8 Euros, the seller knew it was dead so claimed he doesn't know, happened to me before, can't blame anyone else but myself.
Now, out of curiosity and because I didn't know what to do with my new paperweight I did a youtube search for, I don't know, Pentax detached advance lever or the like, and found a video
describing how to disassemble a (pretty similar) Pentax ME and fix the spring mechanism in there. Totally over my head, I have no clue about camera repairs, but what could go wrong, at least I
could study and ruin the inside of a camera. So I started unscrewing the bottom plate and right after loosening the screw on the far right the camera's shutter fired.
Totally surprised I tried the advance lever, and it cocked the shutter as it's supposed to and I could fire it again. "Err... think I fixed it" I thought happily and started tightening the screw
again. Tested again... nothing, the camera was a brick just like before.
On closer inspection it turns out the camera just had a small dent in the bottom plate that put pressure on the mechanism below and kept it from moving freely - one little hit with a hammer on
the dent in the brass and it was gone, the camera works perfectly (light meter too), against my own and most certainly also the seller's expectations.
Moral of the story - always look at your bricked ebay items twice or something like that.
Addendum: I put a testroll (12 images) through the camera without a problem and gave it to my drugstore for development, so it'll take a week until I know if I also need to fix light leaks. However, in the evening the camera "bricked" again to my utter surprise and I checked for the same problem as described above again, first to no avail. When I finally decided it was a shortlived miracle and turned the camera around, a very small plastic chip fell out of the mechanism and it worked again. My guess is the camera once fell down, which caused both the dent and the breaking off of that small plastic thing which now blocked the mechanism. The part didn't look like anything crucial related to the mechanics, and since the camera works again and has no hole in it I'm not worried.
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