Tried fixing a sticky shutter on a Nikon F2 in my kitchen last night

I was cleaning the shutter blades on a Nikon F2 I picked up at a flea market, and I accidentally knocked the self-timer lever out of alignment... Now the whole mechanism is locked up and I can't even fire the shutter. Has anyone else dealt with a misaligned self-timer on these old F bodies?

3 comments

3 Comments

kelly3851mo ago

That tapping advice is risky - I've heard the self timer gear train gets brittle with age and the teeth can snap off if you force it. Your best bet might be wiggling the main shutter curtain release fork while barely touching the lever.

daniel_walker22d ago

oh man, I did basically the same thing with my F2 last year except I wasn't even cleaning it, I was just showing off to a friend how smooth the self timer was and jammed the whole thing in about two seconds. really made me feel like a genius. kelly385 is right about the gear teeth being brittle, I tried the tapping trick with a wooden chopstick and just heard a little ping noise followed by immediate regret. kaiharris is probably giving the smart advice but I'm too stubborn and cheap to send mine out, so I just ended up taking the whole bottom plate off and gently wiggling things with a pair of tweezers while cursing at it for an hour. somehow it clicked back into place and has been working fine since, but I'm pretty sure that was just dumb luck and not skill. if you try it yourself just go real slow and don't force anything, these old cameras really don't like being manhandled.

kaiharris1mo ago

honestly you're better off just letting it lock up and sending it to a repair guy. those f2 self timers are finicky as hell and messing with them usually makes things worse. i did the same thing on my f2a last year and spent a weekend trying to fix it only to have to pay $150 to get it sorted anyway. the whole mechanism is way more delicate than people give it credit for, especially with the age of these bodies now. have you tried just gently tapping the lever back into place with a plastic spudger or is it completely stuck?