A strange design in my S3

[Dez]

This is derived from a post in the Nikon RF page. Apologies, but I am totally stuck here, and this is a strange one that requires some heavy-duty Nikon expertise.

I need to take the top plate off an S3 for servicing. Easy, right? Not so much, as it turns out.

For both the Nikon SP and Nikon F, removing the wind lever so the ring underneath it can be unscrewed, enabling the top to be removed is trivial. After taking off the frame counter cover you simply lift the wind lever out with a bit of wiggling. The chrome plated lever is held onto a brass ring with three screws, and it is not usually necessary to separate the two parts. The design is almost exactly the same for both cameras.





But it appears my S3 is different. The lever will not lift out, so I removed the three usually-unnecessary-to-remove screws, only to discover that the ring part (actually appears as three crescent shapes) has an inside diameter that is actually smaller than the outside diameter of the housing above it- impossible to lift out. Not a fault of observation, it really is smaller. The housing also appears to be impossible to remove, that is, until the top is taken off.



That situation is obviously impossible, as it's not apparent that the camera could ever have been assembled in the first place, so I am clearly missing something. Can somebody please give me a hand with this one?

The construction is very different from what I normally see. Usually the wind lever and the flat brass ring that screws onto it are flat, and bayonet onto pieces below. Not the case here. The brass ring is a very different shape, and has a L-section that extends down into the body of the camera.



In this picture I show how the ring is retained by the upper housing. the interference is ~0.5mm. The upper housing is not slotted- nothing can bayonet onto it, and obviously it must be removed before the wind lever and its attached brass part can be removed for access to the top cover retaining ring.



It looks like the housing may unscrew, but it is only aluminum, and I want to know what I'm doing before trying to do so.

The camera is not a particularly early S3, so it's no prototype. Why on earth would the design be different from the F and the SP????

Cheers,
Dez

[Dez]

All resolved due to expert advice from Highway 61 and photomoof. Thanks, guys!

This problem was pretty obscure, but not unique to me, so I thought I would tell the whole story here.

I had to pull the top off my S3 to cure the unreliable flash operation. This is usually the fault of the contacts that live just behind the shutter speed dial, which tend to get wet from lubricants in the shutter setting mechanism, and then attract insulating crud. And the top is really easy to take off in this camera, right? Well, usually.



Here's the camera top. Remove the rewind knob and the plate beneath it, the shutter speed dial, the AR switch, and the ring underneath the wind lever assembly, and the top falls off in your hand. I have done this many a time with F's and a couple times with SP's, so I figured I was in for a one hour job.



Here's the wind lever. This usually just pops off with a bit of wiggling, or just undo the three screws holding it onto the brass bayonetting ring beneath it and the parts just lift off. However this camera used an earlier construction of the wind mechanism I had never seen before, and while the lever comes off with no problem, the ring beneath is is a quite different part from the usual design, and it is not immediately apparent how to get it off the camera.



Please note that it is not necessary to remove all the bits from the centre of the mechanism as shown in this picture. I had done so in my original disassembly because I was casting around for a method of taking it apart, and went hunting for hidden screws. In this design, there are three radial grub screws in the frame counter housing, visible through slots in the winder flange when the mechanism is in the standoff position from the camera body. Visible, that is, if the frame counter is rotated into the exactly correct position. Mine wan't, and so the screws were a mystery to me until "Highway 61" told me where to look for them.



With the screws removed or loosened, the frame counter housing and the winder flange can be lifted out, giving access to the last ring holding the top on.



This shows the removed housing, showing the location of one of the screw holes.






Here are top and bottom views of the winder flange.

So now the contacts are cleaned, the flash is working, and everything is back together, but it took a good deal more than an hour! I have never seen this construction in any Nikon repair manual, so I hope that this posting may be of assistance to the next person to encounter this unusual design.

Cheers,
Dez