Sluggish wind lever on a Fujica ST801

Scoo · Joined: 16 Jun 2009 Posts: 62 Location: Finland

Got a Fujica ST801 M42 SLR last week. It works nicely, metering is spot on and everything is nice except the wind crank is sluggish to return (and sometimes the winding on feels a bit forced).

I started by taking the top off for a general clean (see these topics at kyphoto.com: http://www.kyphoto.com/classics/forum/messages/6899/7694.html?1184202011 ; http://www.kyphoto.com/classics/forum/messages/6899/7696.html?1161589655, it appears that the fellow in the first post had the retaining ring around the rewind knob hub screwed down upside down, thus hiding the slotted end. Mine had its slotted end facings upwards).

I didn't spot any obvious problems there and so I attacked the bottom of the camera. Having removed the bottom cover I blew away dust and gave the exposed gears a quick flush with naptha.

Two foreign objects were removed, a two millimetre long piece of electric cable (the same sort that's used in the camera) and a small metal shaving that sat under a long lever that connects the wind spool on the right with the shutter's clockwork mechanism over on the left (it had caused some brassing to the body).

When there's no film loaded the winding action works effortlessly and the return of the winding lever is snappy. With film loaded it winds with a bit more effort and returns intermittently if a quick stroke is performed, usually it always gets stuck and does not return when at the end of the stroke. It also tends to get more prone to get stuck when 12-16 frames or more have been wound on and there starts to be more film wound on the take up spool. The take up spool is a possible suspect, it can be screwed CW/CCW a bit being seated higher or lover on the spool shaft until it stops or until it engages the winding mechanism.

Any ideas? Images will follow later tonight. This isn't critical, frame spacing is OK on my first test roll, however a bit annoying that one usually have to manually help the winding lever to assume its starting position.

themoleman342 · Expire: 2013-01-24

Sorry for the late reply. Just out of curiosity, can you still press in the film reminder button on the bottom of the camera?

Scoo · Joined: 16 Jun 2009 Posts: 62 Location: Finland

No problem, Mrs Scoo and five month old "baby Scoo" has had some swine-flue esque fever going so I haven't really had time to look into it.

I assume you mean the button to disegage the sprockets so one can wind back the film? Yep, it works fine, does touch the long lever I spoke of earlier (must really open it up again and take a picture for those who don't have an ST801), it's spring loaded and rests agains the long connecting lever until pushed down where it stays locked down. As there's brassing it could be that this issue has been going on for some time and the previous owner(s) could have simply used more force.