I want to clean the viewfinder of my Leica M1 by myself. Where can I get a written and/or illustrated instruction for the removal of the top cover of an M 1/2/3 ? Thank you very much in advance for your help !

-- Carsten Manske (manske@schuberth.de), January 03, 2002

Answers

Carsten,

Try Leica Camera Repair Handbook ($35) at CameraBooks.com. They may also have other Leica repair manuals. I admire anyone with the fortitude to tackle repairs on something as complex as a Leica camera. My repair skills are quite limited. Good luck. LB

-- Luther Berry (lberrytx@aol.com), January 03, 2002.

CArsten:

I also admire anyone whio is willinn g to tackle that.

One word of advice from experience; Save all the pieces so if needed, a qualified repair person can re- assemble it all.

Good Luck

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richard.ilomaki@f,mglobal.com), January 03, 2002.

Many have been tempted, a few have tried, most have regretted it!

-- Giles Poilu (giles@monpoilu.icom43.net), January 03, 2002.

Carsten,

despite of what the others say: It is just a viewfinder (M1), not a rangefinder. So cleaning might be much easier than a M(> 1). It cannot be that difficult, but remember every part you take off - even the small ones. I did clean some 70s rangefinders myself and every single one is still working. Just be patient and take your time.
For cleaning the glas a new and good quality microfibre cloth seems to be more adaequate, I don't believe in lens cleansers, though some swear by them. Don't try to user canned air, the pressure usually proves too much for the mechanical parts. If you have further questions, under www.kyphoto.com is a very good repair forum with people that have lots of experience - not with Leica, but somehow all cameras are similar ...

Have fun fiddling - Kai

-- Kai Blanke (kai.blanke@iname.com), January 03, 2002.

The problem with do it yourself projects is that to do them right, you need to buy special tools that cost as much as having a specialist do the job for you. People try to use scissors instead of a spanner wrench, etc, and you end up with a sloppy job at best. I also have run into screws and retaining rings that are frozen after being in place for 50 years. I tip my hat to camera repair people who sill are willing to work on classic cameras. They must have "the golden touch" and amazing patience to this kind of work every day.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), January 03, 2002.

Hi Carsten, try it on manuals2go.com. They have every sort of manual. You can have them printed or as a pdf file. I bought a repair manual for the M 2 to M4 cameras. The quality of this repair manual is very good with good reproduciton of the illustrations, the one i bought for a Rollei 35S was not so good in qualtiy but still it is usable. Good luck anyway, but what I see from the repair instruction it does not seem to be impossible what you want to do. You simply need some special tolls that will cost you all together around 150$ I assume.

Lost of fun anyway.

Johannes

-- Johannes Fleischhauer (j.fleischhauer@vsao.ch), January 03, 2002.

Another good book is: Leica Camera Repair Handbook : Repairing & Resotring Collectible Leica Cameras, Lenses & Accessories by Tomosy. He has also written other books that are not Leica specific that have useful guidelines.

Good luck & cheers,

-- Duane K (dkucheran@creo.com), January 03, 2002.

Tomosy´s is in my opinion a good printed book, but you always lack of instructions in dismantling the rangefinder, but your M1 does not have one, have you think it may be a decementing problem in the finder, more dificult to solve than we guess, but Tomosy gives you indications of where to find Canadian Balsam to recement, as well as few instructions.

I have had the experience of taking the top plate off from one of my M3, I didn´t get too far, but belive me looking down into the M is fascinating.

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), January 03, 2002.

Carsten

Well it's your camera, so you can do what you want with it. If it were me, I would leave this to a professional or to Leica. Collectors (me included) pay close attention to the small screws, for damage produced by people using the wrong instruments to pry open Leica cameras and lenses. At the factory, they have precise tools (including wooden screw drivers) to remove each tiny screw without any damage. So if you don't care about the resale value of the camera, go ahead and remove the top plate.

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), January 03, 2002.

First I have to agree with many contributors above. The glue holding the viewfinder prism together is very old and delicate and would easily be permenantly damaged if mis-handled. The M1 has a prism just like the other Ms do as it have parallax correcting projected framelines for the 35 and 50 lenses (some are 50 and 135).

Second get the special tools. YOU WILL DAMAGE THE CAMERA IF YOU DO NOT USE THE PROPER SPECIAL TOOLS. Here is a site that sells them:

http://www.micro-tools.com/

Once you get the tools, try just removing the eyepiece and cleaning that and the glass exposed. An amazing amount of stuff gets in there.

If you want to go further then go to:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_i d=004Ccq

The M1 and M2 cameras are identical except for the lack of a rangefinder. There are also several sites that sell copies of the M2 repair manual which has great diagrams and what not.

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), January 03, 2002.

Woe to you who tinkers with a Leica . . . :-)

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), January 04, 2002.

OK, enough cheek from me, here's some useful info: http://www .kyphoto.com/classics/topcoverremoval.html (cartoon in my post above was taken from this site).

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), January 04, 2002.