I finally stopped swapping whole shutter units and it cost me $40 to learn

Last month a guy brought in a Canon AE-1 with a shutter that would hang open on slow speeds, and my first move was to just order a whole replacement unit like always. A retired tech down in Tucson asked me why I was throwing away a $40 assembly when the real problem was old grease on the curtain brake, and he was dead right. I cleaned that one spot with naphtha, relubed it with a tiny bit of moly, and the speeds timed out perfect on the tester. So now I want to know, how many of you are still parts-swapping your way through repairs when a cleaning would fix it, and what finally made you stop?

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brian_coleman12d ago

We fix what's cheap, not what's broke.

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