I just "repaired" a Nikkor!

[Sanford]

<p>18-200mm Nikkor zoom with major mold under the front element. My photos looked like I was photographing spider weds. A YouTube video showed how to remove, clean and replace the front element with a Swiss Army Knife and a miniature phillips screwdriver. I just hope it worked.</p>

[owen_omeara]

<p>You are a braver man than I am my friend.</p>

<p>-O</p>

[Rick Waller]

<p>Would love to hear how it worked out. From everything I have ever read, even pro repair shops have difficulty successfully removing mold since it nearly impossible to kill the unseen spores and the visible mold often grows back.</p>

<p>If your fix works long term, it would be nice to hear that it can be done, What did you use to mitigate the mold? I can understand that it may not be hard to disassemble and reassemble a lens mechanically, but cleaning off the mold is something I know nothing about.</p>

[Sanford]

<p>I had nothing to lose as I'm moving away from Nikon and would never have replaced it or just got the 70-300mm plastic Nikkor. I used my breath and lens cleaning tissue to clean it, came right off. Half of the six retaining screws just fell out when I removed the rubber retainer. This is an old lens purchased with a D300 about seven years ago.</p>

[Rick Waller]

<p>Please let us know if the grunge grows back. </p>

[mike_halliwell]

<blockquote>

<p>since it nearly impossible to kill the unseen spores and the visible mold often grows back.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I also gather exposure to the UVC tubes used in pond clarifiers is FATAL to the little buggers.</p>

[Sanford]

<p>Out in the bright sunlight I can see I didn't get it all but I can't see the spider webs anymore in the photos. </p>

[Dieter Schaefer]

<p>I once received a 50-135 zoom as part of an ebay purchase - turned out the lens' inside was mold heaven! Didn't even bother with a "repair" - sold it to someone that had more confidence in removing that mold.</p>

<p>Did repair a Nikkor once though - a 24-50 that I had dropped at the shore of a lake (not into the water, but it picked up some grains of sand). Considered it a total loss and one day just started to work on it. Got all the sand out (as far as I could tell) - and the lens worked fine afterward.</p>

 

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Household bleach containing Sodium hypochlorite will kill fungus and its spores. A lens tissue dipped in bleach and wiped all over the affected element(s) will do the job. But note: Do not use "thick" bleach containing sodium hydroxide or any gelling agent, or one without sodium hypochlorite. Baby-bottle sterilising tablets also usually have sodium hypochlorite as the active ingredient, and may provide a purer source of that chemical.</p>

[Matthew Currie]

<p>Sometimes you're lucky. Back in about 1970 I had a Leitz Summar lens full of mold. I took it apart and cleaned it up, I can't even remember with what - probably rubbing alcohol - and put it back together. It's still mold free.</p>

[mervyn_wilmington]

<p>Back in the 1990s, one of our sons and I used to visit a camera shop where the owner always had a selection of 'optical paper weights' - lenses that were 'bad' for some reason. They were £5 or £10. One day, there was a Nikon medium zoom, 28-105 I think. It looked immaculate externally. However, the reason it was there was because the owner had dropped it in fine sand, and the lens was full of it. There had been an insurance claim, and it had been left with the dealer when that had been settled.</p>

<p>Our son suggested we should buy it. He would have been in his very early teens at the time. I parted with my £5 or £10. We arrived back home and he went for the tiny precision screwdrivers. He worked on it for a while. This was pre-internet and there were no diagrams or advice available. He got it fully disassembled. He has a brain that works very logically, and seems to recognise things that I couldn't. A few years on he gained a master of physics degree at Oxford. Perhaps he was already showing lateral thinking and the like in those early days.</p>

<p>He decided that the af could not be recovered because attempts to use the lens after sand had encroached had caused damage that could not be corrected without new parts. However, he thoroughly cleaned and reassembled it.</p>

<p>It functioned perfectly in manual focus. There were no optical problems. My £5 or £10 proved well spent.</p>

[dave_wilson1]

In the back of the big lenses are recessed elements. My old 400mm 3.5 and the 180mm and others I've had. I clean the

rear elements with vodka, no mold ever.

[daniel_johnson6]

<p>Congratulations on the repair!<br>

My brother and I managed to repair a broken VR cable from deep inside an 18-200...works perfect now!</p>