Got a stuck shutter on a Canon AE-1 from the 80s...

Picked up this Canon AE-1 from a thrift store for $40 last Saturday. The shutter fires but sticks halfway on the second curtain at slower speeds. Tried cleaning the curtain tracks with lighter fluid and a Q-tip, worked for a few shots then jammed again. Thinking the magnet assembly might need adjusting or the foam bumper is turning to goo. Anyone else run into this on old Canons and found a fix that sticks?

2 comments

2 Comments

piperb9319d ago

Yeah that foam turning to goo is almost definitely your problem. It gets sticky and grabs the curtain as it tries to close. Happens on pretty much every AE-1 from that era. Did you actually check the foam bumper at the bottom of the mirror box or just assume it was the tracks? Because if that foam is the issue, cleaning it off with lighter fluid only works until the residue spreads again. You'll need to fully scrape it out and replace it with new light seal foam.

willow40719d ago

yeah that lighter fluid trick is a bandaid, it just smears the goo around. better off scraping the whole strip out with a qtip and isopropyl, then put in a fresh cut of light seal foam from ebay.