Petri CC 1.9 Shutter Repair

CoryAmmerman · November 4, 2013

I recently bought a Petri Color Corrected Super f1.9 rangefinder off of Ebay. I got it for a pretty good price, and when it arrived at my doorstep, I quickly figured out why. If i had inspected the pictures a little more closely, I'd have noticed that the shutter was visibly broken. Additionally, the camera received a severe knock to the top plate somewhere in transit that damaged both the everready case and the top plate of the camera inside, dislodging one of the rangefinder mirrors under the top plate. Since I had bought it as-is and it wasn't really worth trying to make a claim with USPS, I decided to try to fix it myself, even though it was going to be a much more extensive repair than the usual naptha bath most of my previous shutter repairs consisted of. Since the Classic Camera Repair Forum (kyphoto) is no longer active, I decided to post the details of the repair here as a reference for other tinkerers like myself, should someone find themselves in a similar position. I hope this is OK with the mods.

The first thing I did was a little research. I came across <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwrede/sets/72157632086559984">this set</a> on flicker of a Petri 2.8 repair. The two cameras are not exactly alike, but are very similar. The only major difference I noticed was that the 1.9 uses spacers on the shutter leaves, while the 2.8 in this set does not appear to use them.

Here is the camera as it appeared when I got it.

Things look ok from the front, but from the back the damage to the top plate was obvious.

This is not how the shutter is supposed to look.

So, on with the repair steps we go.

The first step was to remove the front of the lens. Since we'll be attacking the shutter from the rear, this step is not exactly neccessary, but is advisable to keep from scratching the front element. The front standard and the front element group simply unscrew from the camera as a whole unit. Mine unscrewed by hand, but you might need to use one of those jar opener thingys to get it off.

Here is the front of the camera with the front element removed. The ring at top right does not need to be removed, but I hadn't figured that out at this point. You can see here that the shutter is fairly well mangled.

Next, remove the top and bottom plates. First, you'll need to remove the rewind crank. Hold the post in place from inside the film chamber by placing a small screwdriver between the teeth at the end and turn the rewind knob. The film advance lever is removed by unscrewing the knob on top. I had to use a pair of pliers to get enough pressure to turn it. Lastly, remove the screw located between the film advance and shutter button, and the two screws that were underneath the rewind wheel. The top plate should lift off now. The bottom plate is held in place by a small screw at each end. Make sure that when you remove the bottom plate you don't loose the rewind release button. It will fall out.

At this point, the four screws holding the lens assembly to the front of the camera should be exposed. I've highlighted them here with yellow arrows (disregard the orange arrow).

Remove the fours screws and pry up the leatherette as gently as possible. There's no real way to do this with out breaking the leatherette, but if you're careful, you should be able to do it without completely destroying it and be able to glue it back on later. This is what mine looked like after removing the lens assembly.

Next, flip the lens assembly over and remove the slotted ring (yellow arrow). I strongly advise using a spanner here since the rear element is highly exposed. If you don't have one, I got mine from Amazon for about $5.

Once that's off, you can remove the shutter and aperture assembly from the lens board. There are Three brass rings around the rear element. These might stay on the lens board or on the back of the assembly when you remove it. In my case, one stayed on the lens board and two stayed with the assembly. These rings are what control the aperture and trip the shutter. take them off and set them aside.

Then unscrew the rear element and set it aside.

If you look close at the above picture you'll notice something that is out of place in the aperture. At this point I was about ready to call it quits because I thought this was a broken piece of one of the shutter leaves. Luckily I decided to continue and later discovered that this is one of the spacers.

With the rear element gone, you have to turn the aperture ring to about f2.8 to expose the four screws holding the aperture and shutter assemblies together (highlighted with orange arrows). Unscrew these (the silver screw is longer than the black ones) and lift the aperture assembly off and set it aside.

Now the shutter assembly is completely exposed and ready to be reassembled. I'm glad that the two spacers in the photo above stayed in place since otherwise I'd have had no idea whether they went on top or underneath the shutter leaves. If you look closely at the spacer in the 12 o'clock position, you'll notice that it is out of place. It was actually jammed in that positionand is probably the cause of the shutter failure to begin with.

First put all of the spacers in place.

Then the shutter leaves go in. I have no idea if there's a particular order that these are supposed to go in with. I just started at the bottom and worked my way clockwise around the assembly. As of right now, my shutter is still working, so I guess I got it right.

Once the shutter leaves are back in place, very gently lower the aperture assembly in place, making sure that none of the leaves moves out of position, and screw it back down. It took me a couple of tries to get this part right. At this point, things are ready to be put back together. Everything is pretty much just the reverse of taking it apart. The only things of note are the position of the brass rings for reassembly is as showed below.

Each of the rings connects with a lever on either side that's not visible in this shot, but you can see them by looking in the openings. The triangle shaped cut out is what trips the shutter and should be lined up with the small lever on the back of the aperture/shutter assembly as shown below.

The last thing to mention here is that when you screw the slotted ring that holds everything onto the lens board back into place, make sure that the white diamond and the red triangle on top of the outside of the lens stay lined up (see below). When I first put mine back together, the white diamond was too far to the right and the film advance didn't fully cock the shutter.

They are actually still not lined up exactly, but they're close enough that the shutter fires. Everything else with the reassembly is pretty much straight forward.

If all you have to fix is the shutter, you should be done now. With my camera, I was still not done quite yet. The knock to the top plate had dislodged the small mirror for the rangefinder and bent a few things around a bit. I reattached the mirror with rubber cement. I'm not sure how well this will hold up, but it was all I had, so I used it. The bracket that held the mirror in place was also bent, so the rangefinder was way off. I bent it back while using the lamp on my work table (that I measured to be about 3.5 feet away) as a focus point, with the lens set to the 3.4 ft mark. I don't do a lot of shallow DOF stuff, so this will hopefully be sufficient. After that all I had to do was straighten out the top deck with a little surgical application of force at the bend in the plate...with a hammer and flat-head screwdriver ;-)... and glue the broken leatherette back in place. TAAA-DAAA!

I'll be keeping up with this thread with the notification system here. As long as P.Net notifies me of responses, feel free to ask me any questions should you need to in the future.

CoryAmmerman · November 4, 2013

I've also done a few other repairs recently, including a Ricoh 500 and a couple of Minolta lenses. If no one objects, I'll do a write up on those as well, as soon as I get my desktop where those pictures are stored up and running again.

Also, I forgot to mention that if you want to see any of the pictures in a larger format, just click on the pic and it should take you to the flicker set where they are 2000 pixels wide. There are a few extra pictures of the repair there as well.

rick_schuster · November 4, 2013

Thanks for this info. I recently received the exact same camera via a gear giveaway, and the top plate got smashed in transit (all the parts on the top plate of this camera can be seen imprinted on the bottom of another camera that it was packaged with -- which would be kind of funny if it wasn't so sad). The shutter button on mine is smashed way down. Your description should help me in dismantling mine and attempting to get the shutter button straightened out. I think my repairs will all be in the top plate, as the shutter blades are fine. Hopefully someday I'll post about my successful repair.

CoryAmmerman · November 4, 2013

Wow Rick, talk about coincidence. I have some more pictures with the top deck removed, but I have to head to work now. Check back tonight or tomorrow and I'll post them as soon as i get a chance.

peter_simpson1 · November 4, 2013

The kyphoto forum is not gone forever, it's been saved here:

http://rangefinderforum.com/classics/forum/messages/board-topics.html

and there has been some talk about it going live again on RFF...

JDMvW · November 4, 2013

It is really nice to see a detailed story and images of the repair. This is a great thing to have posted. Thank you.

winfried_buechsenschuetz1 · November 5, 2013

Many people will appreciate this very detailed description. I did a lot of work on my Petri (a somewhat later model with bright frame viewfinder). Just one addendum: The shutter blades as well as the surfaces they get in touch with should be cleaned carefully with lighter fluid prior to reassembly, and you should not touch the shutter blades with bare fingers. This will prevent the "sticky shutter syndrome" in the future.

CoryAmmerman · November 5, 2013

Thanks for the comments Peter, JDM, and Winifried. Peter- it's nice to hear that there is some interest in the forum going live again. It's a really good resource. I actually found the flickr set referenced above through an old thread there. Winifried, thanks fo rthe reminder about cleaning the shutter leaves. Guess I got ahead of myself in talking about the reassembly and forgot to mention the cleaning after putting the shutter and aperture assemblies back together.

Rick- Here's a few more pictures of taking the top deck off. It's pretty easy to get off.

Here is the position of the screws under the rewind knob.

This is a shot with the advance lever and the screw on that side removed.

Here's another shot of the top of the camera. The shutter button sits on top of the brass rod to the left of the advance mechanism. The brass rod itself is held in place with gravity and should come out easily. I didn't get a shot of it, but its visible at the top of <a href=" picture</a> from the other set of flickr.

leicaglow · November 6, 2013

Cory, That is awesome. Really fun to read and see. I'm always astonished at the mechanical complexity of these old timers. If I could only find as complete documentation and images for my Canon GL III QL.

winfried_buechsenschuetz1 · November 11, 2013

On

kyphoto.com/classics

you can find some repair articles about the QL17, as well as a copy of the original service manual.

donnie_strickland · November 14, 2013

Well done! BTW the Classic Camera Repair Forum has indeed moved to Rangefinder Forum: <a href="http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=116">http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=116</a>

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Petri CC 1.9 Shutter Repair

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