Just fixed a sticky shutter on a 1978 Pentax K1000

The curtain would catch every third shot. Took it apart three times before I saw the issue. A tiny piece of old foam seal had turned to goo in the track. Cleaned it with isopropyl and a toothpick. Took almost four hours for a five minute fix. Anyone else run into old foam wrecking a simple mechanism?

3 comments

3 Comments

linda5001mo ago

Oh, the classic foam rot. That's not just a Pentax thing. I had a Canon AE-1 where the mirror bumper foam turned to sticky tar. It made this awful squelching sound on every shot. The goo got all over the mirror hinge. Took me a week of cleaning with q-tips to get it all. That stuff is the worst.

felix1471mo ago

Actually, that gooey mirror foam in the AE-1 is a different issue from the shutter seal. The mirror foam just slows the mirror down, but when it rots it's a messy clean-up job for sure. The foam in the shutter track on the K1000 is a light seal, and if it fails it can actually jam the whole curtain mechanism like you found out. Both are a pain, but that shutter track goo will stop the camera dead.

parker_thomas26d ago

Took that same K1000 apart three times myself for a similar issue. The foam goo in the track is like finding out the previous owner used syrup for glue. I spent a whole Saturday scraping it out with a toothpick and isopropyl, only to realize I could've just used a lighter and a paperclip to melt the stuff off faster. Ngl, the first time I heard that shutter catch I thought I broke something serious. Turns out it was just a spec of tar from the 80s deciding to ruin my day. Honestly, that camera is bulletproof except for the foam which is basically designed to turn into a sticky mess after 20 years.