Replace the film take-up spool of a Leica CL

Leica CLs have a plastic take-up spool that is prone to breaking. The following pictures guide you through removing the white part of the spool, the one that usually breaks, so you can replace it with a new one. The following images start with the bottom plate already removed.

Unscrew the top-left screw a couple of turns, without removing it. Remove the bottom-right screw.

Lift the battery compartment and put it to the side, no need to desolder the wires.

Lift and move to the side, do not remove.

Remove the eccentric disc

Unscrew using a spanner or other tool. In some cameras this screw is very tight, so you will need to make yourself a tool.

I ground this spanner tip to dimension, so that it’d be easier to remove the screw without damaging it.

Remove the axis

Remove the axis

Now you can carefully extract the take-up spool

Some version of the cameras have an additional screw that needs to be removed before the white plastic part (the one that usually breaks apart) from the black part.

I’ve seen two versions so far: the one on the left has the additional screw shown in the previous picture, while the one on the right doesn’t. The black part of the take-up spools are not interchangable, and they ahve to be the right one to match the white part.

Inside a Leica CL Metering Device

The meter needle of my Leica CL wasn’t moving at all, so I decided to take it apart and see what the problem was.

As it turns out the metering device, a galvanometer, is broken. When measuring the resistance of the coil, which should be around 3.8kΩ, I get an open circuit. This means that somewhere inside there is a wire that is disconnected, and I decided to take the galvanometer apart and try to repair it. Here are some pictures of the disassembling process and of what’s inside the galvanometer.

 

We want to remove the linkage for the shutter speed indicator. Put the shutter dial on the B position and unscrew that top screw that holds the spring in place.

Before you remove the arm, loosen the screw in the red box, till you can move the metal piece on the right. Then gently remove the arm.

Remove the two screws that keep the metering device arm in place

Notice that there are two metal pieces that come off

Gently remove the arm

Unscrew the two screws that you see on the left of where the galvanometer was, and gently remove that device (you will need to desolder the wires from it)

If you unscrew one of the screws on the side of the galvanometer, you can pop the lid off

Before you can remove the coil from its inner housing (that C shaped brass piece with the silver magnet in the middle) you will have to desolder the two hairsprings

This hairspring, and the other on the other side of the coil, provide the spring action for the coil, while also functioning as the electrical contact between the ends of the coil and the outside contacts

As you can see, the hairspring is very small, you will need tweezers, a loupe (or better a microscope), a good soldering iron and a lot of patience

The red arrow points to one of the ends of the coil that attaches to the contact. In my case, both the ends of the coil had to be re-soldered to their contact. It’s a painful and slow process, and if like me you don’t have a microscope and a good SMD soldering iron, it is very much a difficult and trial-and-error process. You will need time and patience.

After several attempts, the coil is connected to both contacts, and the contacts are connected to the hairsprings. As you can see, that soldering spot where the hairspring connects is NOT a good joint, but that’s as good as it gets with my limited tools. To have a nicer and more secure joint you will need a microscope, good tin, flux, and a SMD iron.

The coil back in its frame! After hours of work the galvanometer is finally working again, and can be reassembled and reinstalled on the camera.

The whole process is a delicate and painful one, unless you own a stereo microscope and a good SMD soldering iron. If you contact Leica they can send you the spare part, but it takes 3 weeks to come from Germany (they don’t repair Leica CLs in  USA) and it costs more than $80.

Adjusting the shutter slow speeds of a Leica CL

If you ever wondered how the slow speeds of a Leica CL works, here is a picture of the internals after removing the top and the front plates:

In the red box is the slow speed escapement, namely the mechanism that counts time between the opening and the closing of the curtains, while the green arrow points to the lever that transmits the speed selected by the dial.

Removing the selection dial helps understanding how the lever translates the speed information from the dial to the escapement.

The lever, now visible in the red box, pushes the escapement up and down, effectively changing the shutter speed. It is unfortunately impossible to describe this beautiful and ingenuous mechanism in few words, suffice it to say that the speed of the shutter depends on the up-down position of the escapement.

Since the position of the lever determines the slow speeds, and considering that the escapement might change its timing characteristic over the years, it would make sense if this lever were adjustable. And of course, it is.

Removing the screw that holds the lever in place reveals a neat feature: the lever rotates on an eccentric pivot:

Turning the pivot with a screwdriver will change the position of the lever, hence changing the position of the escapement with respect to the shutter speed dial.

Of course, you don’t need to take your camera apart if your slow speeds aren’t what they’re supposed to be. The pivot is easily accessible from the back of the camera, next to the film spool.

Taking a Leica CL apart

I recently bought a Leica CL camera on Adorama for $125. The camera had the following issues:

• Unreliable slow shutter speeds
• Loose rangefinder window’s glass
• Stuck ASA (film speed) selector

I decided to try and fix the camera myself, and since I couldn’t find any information online on this particular camera, I am posting a few pictures on the internals.

Hopefully this will help some of you to safely take your camera apart and repair it.

Here I am removing the screws that hold the shutter speed and film speed dial. DO NOT rock the dial assembly out of its position, otherwise you will likely bend one or more of the arms that are controlled by it. To remove it safely you will first have to disengage the two arms highlighted in the next pictures.

The end of one of the arms bent when I removed the speed dial. As you can see, it is slightly bent upwards (red line). This part of the arm is supposed to slide in the channel on the left (green arrows). I had to straighten the arm back to its original shape.

The two arms that you should disengage before removing the dial assembly.