leet32•4mo ago

Gave up on a Yashica-Mat I was fixing for months

I had this Yashica-Mat 124G sitting on my bench since February. The shutter speeds were all over the place no matter how much I cleaned them. Finally swapped in a parts camera shutter assembly from a beat up one I got for $30 at a flea market in Portland. Has anyone else had luck just swapping whole shutter units instead of rebuilding?

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2 Comments

the_jana4mo ago

Swap the whole shutter assembly and call it done. I've done that on a few old folding cameras and a Mamiya C330. Way less headache than trying to fix every tiny gear and spring inside those old Copal shutters. You just gotta make sure the aperture blades and the focusing helicoid match up between the two cameras. Sometimes the threads are different and you'll end up with a loose fit or a stuck ring. Did you have to do any shimming or just bolt it right in?

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brooke4844mo ago

The 3.5 cm thread pitch on older Copal shutters is actually 0.5 mm, same as the later ones. I've run into that issue swapping a Seikosha into a Copal mount and had to use a shim made from a soda can to get the focus right. The aperture blades usually match up fine if both cameras are from the same era, but the helicoid threads can be tricky if one is brass and the other is aluminum. A little trial and error with some thin washers usually solves it without too much trouble.

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