Rescued a sweet little Contax IIa rangefinder for a buddy

A good friend picked up a IIa on ebay and had it sent to me for a look. (friend?-ha ha ) The shutter release was stuck solid and the film advance was stuck too. The lens helix was bound up pretty stiff and the whole thing was rather dirty.

 

I pulled off the top cover and gave the shutter timer and release mechanism a nice bath as I went about scrubbing all the DNA of previous owners off the knobs, etc. The helix had been lubed with something like wheel bearing grease (!) and it was oozing out all over the focusing scale and surrounding brightwork. The good news is the grease preserved the finish so that it looked amazingly good after cleaning it off. I lubed up the helix with some light Micro-Tools grease and assembled the shutter.

 

After cleaning the viewfinder and rangefinder optics I put it all together and son of a gun if it didn't work just fine! Shutter speeds seem a little slow (10% slow) so maybe more cleaning might solve that. Otherwise, its resurrected and looks like the little jewel these cameras are known for. It was pretty gratifying as I'm sure many of you who tinker know from your own similar experiences.

 

Not a bad result for an afternoon's work.

Here is a shot of the little cutie.

An afternoons work?? I'm very impressed. What a beauty it is... have you tackled the lens?

Nice camera porn !!

Nice find and a great resurrection! That's a beautiful camera...

Good for you!

Thanks for telling us about it.

Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing.