Canon FD 70-210mm focus/zoom slide spacer

Roka · Expire: 2017-04-07

I just bought a Canon FD 70-210mm f/4 zoom. Everything works well but there's a little bit of slop on the focus ring. I removed the grip and found that the focus and zoom ride on a 2 bushings held in place with screws. When I removed them small bits of plastic fell out so I'm guessing there used to be plastic spacers for the channel to ride against. They need to be fairly thin but also rigid. I was thinking of trying to use a stack of shim material but that would be a pain to make. Any other recommendations on what else I could use? I could actually live with the lens this way but I'd rather come up with a fix.

Here you can see the bushing and the small amount of space that's now causing the "slop" without the missing square plastic spacer.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9109 Location: Houston, Texas

How thick does it need to be? For something like this, I'm thinking you can fabricate the square from something else. You know the flat plastic pieces that are used to keep the wrappers closed on loaves of bread? If not too thick, you could probably cut what you need out of one of those.

Just make sure you don't damage the round nylon bushes -- those are a lot harder to replace.

Roka · Expire: 2017-04-07

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9109 Location: Houston, Texas

Yeah, a Tupperware item is a good idea, too. If you need something thicker, that might be a good resource.

Roka · Expire: 2017-04-07

Roka · Expire: 2017-04-07

And BTW, wouldn't a better design have been making the bushing out of a tough nylon and making it the exact size to fit the channel? Maybe they didn't have that kind of material back then?

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9109 Location: Houston, Texas

I'm sure the material they chose, they felt was perfectly adequate. But here some 30-35 years later, it has begun to degrade in ways they probably didn't anticipate.