[Leica] Re: Contax innards

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On May 31, 2006, at 2:45 PM, MSmall wrote:

> I have been inside these cameras:  have you, or he, ever done
> the same?  I am not an engineer but I have seen the difference in
> construction quality at first hand.  I have done minor repairs on a 
> IIa and
> have completely overhauled a II, and, yes, the cameras worked when I 
> got
> them back together, and, no, there were no parts left over from either 
> <he
> grins>.
>

I've been up to my elbows in Contax grease. I owned a Contax I as a 
college student and kept it repaired, replacing the tapes several 
times, degreasing and lubricating with very expensive watch oil, 
adjusting the shutter speeds and rangefinder. I did the same for a 
Contax II several years later, not because I couldn't afford it but 
because I enjoyed playing around with the innards of cameras. Both 
worked fine after reassembly. I will agree that both were, to quote a 
phrase often used to describe the cameras, "Nightmares of misplaced 
mechanical ingenuity." I've had the innards of my Contax IIa apart, 
mostly because of curiosity. It didn't need more than a bit of 
cleaning. It worked perfectly from the day I bought it in the late 50s 
to the present. And I've certainly clicked the shutter far more than 
10,000 times. That's only 200 exposures a year in the time I've owned 
it. About a good single long weekend of pictures.

Larry Z