Repair of fading rangefinder

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The rangefinder image of my Leica II (CLA last year by DAG)is just about too faint to use anymore. Has anyone had the front-surface mirror replaced or resurfaced? Whodoneit, and whaddit cost?

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), June 17, 2001

Answers

You could try this chap. He used to do finder repairs but i am not sure if he still does.

John Maddox, L & J Leica Repair

109 Royal Oak Road

Greenville, SC 29607

(864) 297-6931 4-6 M-F, 10-6 Sat.

Cheers,

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), June 17, 2001.


On a similar note, I recently had my M2 CLA'd, and now I can barely see the framelines. Also, they show up best if I shift my eye position as far left as possible in the exit pupil. What would account for all this? And what should I do? Send it back with a complaint? Or do I have to live with it?

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), June 17, 2001.

Whodoneit, Bob? I'd send it back -- after calling, of course.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), June 17, 2001.

Bill, this was done by someone in Colorado. I don't know the name, but it's the person my local Leica dealer likes to use. I should have had it sent to Leica, no doubt. I'm going to ask them for the name of the repair person, and see if anyone here knows anything about him.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), June 17, 2001.

John Maddox told me a while ago he needed a certain number of repair orders to make it cost-effective to resilver and recement the rangefinder prisms in M3's, M2's etc., but nothing mentioned about replacing the mirrors in the LTM's. I would certainly give him a call. I've seen ones he's repaired and they are positively brilliant with great contrast. Oddly enough, according to him it's the IIIc's and later models that suffer the most from dimming rangefinders.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), June 17, 2001.


I don't think replacing a mirror in a LTM is that difficult. There is a guy on ebay who buys old LTM Leica's that typically need either the vulcanite covering replaced or have dim mirrors and replaces these items, then sells them. I wouldn't recommend this guy but if he can do it it probably isn't that big a deal for a professional.

-- Gerald Widen (gerald@sfa1.com), June 18, 2001.

could it be that too harsh a CLA could actually rub off the framelines?

wow, this would certainly be a good argument to not do a CLA unless it's absolutely necessary...

-- Tristan (tristan@tristantom.com), June 19, 2001.


Stephen Gandy of www.cameraquest.com fame, says that he can do mirror resilvering for Leica LTM camera. I'm saving up enough to have a IIIf overhauled and resilvered as a thank you to the person who has been letting me borrow it for the past year.

http://www.cameraquest.com/repairs.htm

-- Josh Root (rootj@att.net), June 22, 2001.


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