M3

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When wound and cocked the film advance lever, under stress, moves w/o moving the film. with my m2/4/6 the lever stays firm. why is that?

is it the clutch?

is it normal?

will i damage the mechanism if i slip it too much?

what is the purpose of the slipping, i prefer solid.

-- steve (leitz_not_leica@hotmail.com), May 08, 2002

Answers

Steve: Is your M3 a single or double stroke 3? Both of my M3's slipped after cocking, but after they were changed to single stroke it is just like my M6. This is normal on a double stroke. I did not intentionally make mine slip and I did not have a problem. The double stroke takes getting used to, but after 30 years it is second nature (stroke).

-- Mark Johnson (logical1@catholic.org), May 08, 2002.

it is a double stroke. the previous questions remain.

-- steve (leitz_not_leica@hotmail.com), May 08, 2002.

Yes.

No.

It is not going to get better as the damage is done.

It is not supposed to slip, it should be solid.

Time to get it fixed. There are no spare parts for the DS mechanism so you will have to a SS mech installed.

-- John Collier (jbcollier@shaw.ca), May 08, 2002.


The slippage happens with a lot of cameras, and I think it is to prevent you from ripping the film sprockets. The whole Leica double- stroke concept was to prevent film stress (I am grateful that they dropped that "feature"). I haven't tried it on my SS M3, but I would be loath to try to induce slippage. In the worst case, you could conceivably polish the clutch surfaces and make them slip all the time.

-- Dante Stella (dante@dantestella.com), May 08, 2002.

john, it was cla'd by dag late last year.

i had another ds m3 15 yrs ago, and it did the same thing, wasn't broken.

-- steve (leitz_not_leica@hotmail.com), May 09, 2002.



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