King Regula IIId – part III final

Posted on February 20, 2022February 20, 2022 Posted in RepairTagged IIId, King, RegulaLeave a comment

Putting everything together reminds me of my days as a child, first playing with lego and later, taking apart “stuff” to see how it works and put it together again. My parents would not have been very happy if they ever knew that our Yamaha HiFi chain from the 70ties were going through my little hands – just to satisfy my curiosity 🙂

Obviously, I am now rather grown-up and develop my skills even better than ever before. Given I had no reference or service manual for this gem, I kept on taking pictures of every single step to document the before and after. In the meantime, I’ve also top mounted a Sony a6000 on a desk holder and can record my sessions. This to get ready for my own channel on Youtube one day.

With all the pictures, reassembling the body was swift, except from once where I forgot a washer and had to take apart the inner shell again. No bother, helps to develop my skills, right? 🙂

I’ve tried to use a new cleaning product, replacing Acetone which gives me a headache when inhaling the vapours for too long. It’s an orange terpene from Liqui Moly and it works very well on old and stick oil and grease, to soften glue on leatherettes for easier removal and to clean bodies, however you have to be very careful not to remove painting.

Further, I was trying out different greases – but on that topic I will post a dedicated article in the future.

After the body was complete, there was one more thing…the lens, here a ENNA Ennit 50/2,8 with a pretty oily aperture. Given I have no experience yet with cleaning lenses as well as no possibility (yet) to verify and adjust focus, I was not forcing it an only took apart as long as I felt confident. This way, I could not take apart the aperture itself but had access from both front and back. With many (!) cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol I carefully flooded and repeatedly cleaned the blades. The result was good enough for the current stage.

Lastly, the camera was brought to shining with a microfibre cloth. All that remains is a small repainting job of the black color in the front, which has worn off during the camera’s life. Below the finished work and some pictures of the lens disassembly.

King Regula IIId – part II (Prontor-SVS)

Posted on February 20, 2022February 20, 2022 Posted in RepairTagged IIId, King, Prontor, Regula, SVSLeave a comment

Some “first-timers” here: Prontor-SVS, shutter for interchangeable lenses and lengthy process to get the delayed action device doing its work. But step-by-step:

Given the Kind Regula IIId features support for interchangeable lenses, there must be an extra safety measure put in place to prevent light from entering the camera when changing the lenses. Gauthier therefore came up with the system of light-sealing shutter blades which only remain open until the shutter completes its cycle.

My challenge was to fully access both shutter and light sealing blades as you need to remove the pin in the chocking shaft, which took more efforts than simply removing the tiny screw holding the pin in place but carefully hammering the pin out of the shaft. I’m pretty sure there was a more convenient tool available back in the 50es 🙂 The reason for the difficulty is the pin being bulged in the middle to hold tightly in the shaft. I’d assume this was an extra safety measurement besides the screw.

Cleaning and reassembly of the different shutter blades was pretty straight forward and so was the rest of the shutter parts. The fun really started when I realised that the delayed action device (aka selftimer) did not remain chocked but always would snap back into its relaxed state. Clearly some timing was off, but which one? First, I read through the very long Prontor SV, SVS and Pronto shutter repair manual but was not exactly clear in which direction I would need to bend the nose of the cocking arm, so I went with the second option which was to compare to a similar Prontor SVS shutter.

I therefore took the (working) shutter of a rather similar Kind Regula IIId automatic apart and compared the two cocking arms and it became immediately obvious what could be wrong:

On top is the one from the IIId automatic, underneath the one from the IIId. I’ve bent the latter to look similar to the first and the selftimer would now remain wound up and would run down when engaging it!!

With this adjustment done, I could put the remaining parts of the shutter together and proceed with the reassembly of the body. See part III.

Some more pictures of the shutter – for your reference.

King Regula IIId – part I

Posted on January 31, 2022February 5, 2022 Posted in RepairTagged King, RegulaLeave a comment

Another lovely rangefinder camera from the 1950s, built in Germany by the company King who initiated their business in Pforzheim. It offers interchangeable lens support and the body is built like a tank, with a full outer shell and componentised inner structure.

Scanning through the webs to check for any service manual (which – as so often – does not exist) it seems the camera is difficult to repair. At least for the disassembly, I cannot second this statement. There are many screws, mostly the same shape and size (!) some of them are a bit hidden, requiring further steps and levers pushed, but it was not very difficult. The shutter comes off in one piece as well.

Let’s see how the rewind mechanism can be taken apart, something for the next step.

Here some pictures from the dismantling process, enjoy!