Minolta XG9 Repair

[David]

So as I've wanted to learn how to repair cameras, I decided to start with ones no one would miss if I screwed up the repair. My first 'successful' repair was last night of a Minolta XG9. Here were the problems:

1- The shutter was stuck in the 'up' position, except when I rotated a silver knob on the side, which forced the mirror down.
2- The film advance lever did not advance the spool.
3- The shutter button did not activate the shutter.

I began the repair by putting in two new LR44 batteries, but nothing happened.

So I began taking the camera apart. I removed the back door and the base plate. None of the gears in the underside would turn.
I took the new batteries out and noticed some gunk on the batter door. With a Dremmel grinding bit, I (by hand) took the gunk off, which revealed fresh metal on the battery door. I put the batteries in and tried the shutter, nothing. By accident, I bumped the shutter cloth, and the shutter snapped. Then, suddenly, the whole camera came alive and all the functions worked perfectly. It seems that the camera couldn't get power and that caused it to not advance the shutter, or perhaps the shutter even got stuck when the batteries died. Who knows.

A simple, accidental fix, but now I have a working Mintola XG9. It's not a great camera, though, and I don't have a huge need for a Minolta, so I suspect it'll get sold once I verify that it exposes film properly. Plus the leatherette has minor shrinking, which looks hideous.

[David]

Can someone move this to the SLR forum? I clicked on the wrong heading. Sorry.

[trev]

Okay, I bought a canon ftb as a spare/repair with a stuck wind-on. All that was wrong was the the rewind button on the base of the camera was stuck in the rewind mode. A quick and easy fix.

[peterqd]

David, well done on the repair! The battery is always the first place to look for problems, sometimes they just need putting in the right way round!

The shrinking leather is a common problem on Minoltas. They did correct it later, but all the earlier XD and XG models suffered from it (apart from XG-M and later XD7/11s). The leathers on the winders shrank terribly too. You can buy new sets from http://www.cameraleather.com/minolta/ if you really want to go to town, but I agree it probably isn't worth it in this case.