Miranda

A small update to the Miranda Sensomat RE repair project: it is now on long(ish) hold.

I don’t know whether this should be counted as bad luck or good: just when I had the RE finally working properly, a spring underneath the mirror housing broke. The good news is that it broke before I started reassembling the body, surely I would have been quite annoyed if it had broken later.

I went with the camera to the Tampere Camera Service, and the owner there promised to find a replacement spring for the broken one. Unfortunately, as it seems to happen in the springtime with almost every field of life in Finland, all of the photographers have awaken from the winter hibernation at the same time and want their cameras serviced. Consequently, the RE has been there for three weeks already…

To be continued…

The next step was to carefully strip off the front leatherette covers. They came off surprisingly easy, which then allowed me to remove the right side front plate with the shutter release, and the lens mount plate. It never ceases to amaze me to see how very small screws are used in these old cameras to hold everyting together. To think that those heavy lenses cling on to the body with just four ~1.5mm screws…

After removing the baffle inside the mirror housing the real culprit for the sticking mirror could be seen: the system of levers and springs underneath the mirror was bone-dry; it just screamed for some oil! And that’s where I made a little mistake…

But let’s tell first the good news: after oiling the levers the camera now works almost with 99% reliability, on all shutter speeds; I don’t doubt that with more flexing and usage it could ultimately work like new.

It is difficult, or next to impossible, to measure accurately the amount of oil when using a spraycan, and as a consequency I – literally – messed up a little with oiling: the surplus oil found it’s way to the mirror and viewscreen, and worse, to the shutter fabric. Now I need to clean up those parts, too… Next time when trying to overhaul a camera I need to devise some kind of syringe or similar, for accurate dosage of oil.

So, a final cleaning remains, and then I could start reassembling everything back together.

To be continued…

When I originally got this Miranda Sensomat RE body, the shutter seemed to be completely frozen, and the winding lever didn’t seem to be connected to anything, it just moved to and fro. But, one morning while fooling around with the RE, I cranked the lever with a bit more force than usual, and to my surprise it primed the shutter, which then could be released normally… It seems that the winding mechanism was just a little stuck, maybe due some dirt between the gears.

I was so delighted about this sudden display of activity, I almost forgot to go to work that morning… Well, in the evening after I got home from work I examined the camera more closely, and found out that the mirror stuck to up-position on all but the fastest shutter speeds.

I had already bought a “Miranda Sensomat RE Service Manual” from OTC, so with the aid of that invaluable manual I started dismantling the RE yesterday evening. After careful cleaning and oiling the situation is now much better, but the mirror still sticks up almost every time on slower speeds, and the winding lever is a bit stiff on the middle of its travel, at least stiffer than the lever on the Fv model. More dismantling and cleaning seems to be in order now…

To be continued…