tara_sanchez•16d agoProlific Poster

I've been over-tightening shutter tension springs for ages without realizing it

I was setting up a Minolta X-700 for a customer and the second curtain was lagging, so I kept adding a tiny bit more tension each time I checked it. The real clue was when my mentor, watching over my shoulder in the shop, simply said 'you're fighting the grease, not the spring' and pointed out the old, hardened lubricant in the curtain track. How do you all approach a slow second curtain, do you clean the tracks first every single time?

3 comments

3 Comments

harper_owens16d ago

That exact thing happened to me on an X-570 last year. I spent an hour cranking the spring before I saw the gunk in the tracks. Now my first step is always to clean the rails with a proper solvent. I use a cotton swab and some lighter fluid to get the old grease out, then a tiny bit of fresh watch oil. Only after that do I even look at the tension, and usually it's fine. Your mentor was right, you just end up fighting the grease.

joseph93216d ago

Oh man, that's the worst kind of time sink! You feel like a genius fixing it, then realize you were just wrestling with old goop. Classic case of overthinking the hard part and missing the simple fix.

the_felix15d ago

My third spring replacement on an old Omega taught me that lesson the hard way.