Canon FD rollers

[Gardener]

If you've taken apart a few FD lenses you know that quite a few of them feature small brass rollers with black plastic inserts. These black plastic parts have a habit of falling apart, sometimes blocking the movement, sometimes causing significant play in focus. I wonder if any of you guys found a source for matching tubing or figured a way to replace them altogether.

[Lloydy]

Any dimensions ? even approximate ones might help.

[Gardener]

You are probably right - I should just try something. In fact I just ordered a meter of teflon tubing off e-bay. Let's see how it fits.

[Lloydy]

I made rollers / bushes for an instrument at work many years ago from the ink tube of a ball point pen. It was fractionally smaller, but a lot harder wearing. My bodge lasted many years longer than the original ones.
It's surprising where you can find stuff to fix something.

[Gardener]

I've scavenged a lot of rollers from dead zooms, and they work beautifully most of the time but in this particular case matching the size has been a total pain in the neck.