Mike's Rolleicord V Fix It Page
(or a few basic Rolleicord repairs I've learned)
Disclaimer
I will not be held responsible for any damage that results
from you looking at or following these notes. If you don't feel comfortable
goofing around with this stuff or the possibility that you could
damage something on your camera, just don't do it.
Viewing Lens Out of Whack with Taking lens
Soon after I brought home my old Rolleicord, I noticed that the
focus on my camera was out of whack. It would focus past infinity.
Over time, I figured out that the taking lens was OK, it was
just the viewing lens that was out of adjustment. At first,
I put a little paper shims under the view finder to raise it up. That
got it in better shape, but it wasn't perfect. Finally, I found
that by removing the front cover, the taking lens can easily be adjusted
by loosening a set screw and screwing it in and out.
The front cover is removed by removing the leather, the knob on the
shutter cock/release lever and the eight screws holding the two bezels on.
Once the screws are out and the knob on the shutter cock/release lever
is removed, you should be able to remove the bezels.
Once the bezels are removed you can loosen the locking screw towards the
top of the taking lens and adjust the focus by screwing the lens in or out.
Replacing the bezels is a bit tricky since the aperture and shutter
control levers have to be properly aligned. Also both bezels have
to replaced together. It is a bit of a puzzle, but not an extremely
difficult task.
Flim Advance Doesn't Stop Soon Enough (too much spacing between frames)
The problem in this case was that the bar that dropped down and engaged
the gears on the advance wheel to stop it, wasn't fully engaging.
This allowed the wheel to advance, sometimes a little, sometimes a
lot, before catching hold and stopping the advance mechanism. The culprit
was that the lever didn't have enough clearance from the frame to drop all
of the way down and engage the gears. A little bit of grinding
with a Dremel type tool on the lever to add clearance solved the problem.
The yellow arrows in the diagram of a Rollei Vb, show where the points
of interference, occurred.
You have to remove the side cover to reach the mechanism. The
trickiest part of this is understanding that the focus knob consists of
two parts. The outer part unscrews from the inner, allowing you to
disassemble the knob and remove the side. A little cleaning and lubrication
while you are in there, may help smooth out the advance mechanism.
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