Kiev shutter question

Hello,

sometimes I have a Kiev (doesn't matter if it's a II or 4) which has a strange shutter behaviour. Releasing the shutter is very very very slow, you can see the curtains travel even at 1/1250th. The travel tooks about 1-2 seconds.
So I opened the Kiev, took the shutter out and cleaned all the gears with ligher fluid. And it seems to work fine after that. But 1 or 2 days later the shutter is as slow as before. I disassembled one Kiev a second time, cleaned all again, it works perfectly, but after 2 days it was slow again...
Does anybody know what's going wrong with those shutters? Any hints what else I have to clean? I cleaned all gears under the winding knob and the gears in the shutter.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Could it be the shutter tension is set too low?

Hmm... I don't know... why is the shutter running 1 or 2 days good after cleaning it? The lighter fluid should be away after 1 hour.
I know the Kiev survival site, maybe I try to increase the tension but it seems to be ok directly after cleaning.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

It seems that there is some grease trapped in some critical place, which gets softened with lighter fluid, and then dries in 1-2 days. Lighter fluid itself dries fast from the surface, but if trapped in some closed space and mixed with grease, will sit for a long time (1-2 days in your case).

I do not know what can cause even fast speeds to be slow. Kiev shutter has 2 (or 3) delay mechanisms, i.e. when you fire at 1/500, the gears that work at slow speeds (1/5th for example), are not engaged. So it is possible to have perfectly accurate fast speeds and very sluggish slow speeds.
A shutter wash you described should fix at least some speeds permanently, but if all are delayed, I would think about the drums that roll and unroll curtains. But those you should not take apart, they are hard to adjust. I would not mess with the curtain tension. The fact that they work well for 1-2 days tells me that the tension is OK.

Maybe you should soak the gear side (not curtains!) in lighter fluid for some longer time?

Yuri

Yuri,

thanks for the information. I will try it out if I have the time to disassemble the Kiev another time.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

I think Yuri is right about the lighter fluid, but do the pivots get any lubrication, or can you get at them? Most of the other cameras I worked on I used a little fine oil such as watch oil on the pivots of the curtain barrels being careful not to get any on the curtain ,it can soften the glue. Maybe you got it too clean, Also I wouldn't get any deeper into this than necessary. I did Leica flex cla and Leica warned not to use any petroleum solvents for that reason. Maybe they wanted us to all buy lubricants and glues from them..Don

Maybe trescam camera repair can also offer a suggestion, Don