Thread: Pentax K1000 service/ repair

Ok so turns out if you leave people alone with a camera and a screwdriver long enough they will find out the answer for themselves.

The wire was separated from the battery terminal by corrosion. So will follow up with a friend who has the electronics gear to solder.

Originally Posted by Pac man

The wire was separated from the battery terminal by corrosion. So will follow up with a friend who has the electronics gear to solder.

Do yourself a favour and have it done professionally or just use a hand held meter. To be honest once you get into the routine a hand held meter is much more usefull than the built in camera averaging meter. Unless you are shooting slides another alternative is to learn to use the sunny 16 rule which works surprisingly well for general photography with film especially some of the modern films which have a very wide lattitude.

I know the K1000 very well.You will find it is (usually) not as simple as it looks. The wire is most likely just the start of your problem.

Sometimes you can be lucky but assuming the worst this is how you story will unwind.

Your first stumbling block is that the battery terminal is stainless steel. You will melt the plastic holder before you can get enough heat into the terminal for the solder to take. If you look closly at the battery holder you will notice 2 rivets. The wire was soldered onto the terminal before being assembled into the holder. The wire is only just long enough to reach battery terminal and with the piece that has coroded off the end it is probably just not long enough. Also with the wire being so fine you will have great difficulty stripping it without breaking it as the corosion has most likely tracked up the wire. I have seen cameras where a short piece of wire has been cobbled onto the end of the remaining wire and twisted around the battery terminal. Not a good idea! Battery wire coroded off usually means replacing the wire.

This is where the fun really starts and you get to use your screwdriver again .... and a few other tools you probably don't have.

If the wire needs to be replaced you start with removing all the controls and the top plate of camera, light meter circuit board, the pentaprism and galvanometer, the front leatherette covering, the lens board (carefull not to upset the lens alignment) to allow access to get the new wire through. Now all you have to do is find some very light guage wire and replace the wire and reassemble hopefully without breaking one of the other dozen or so wires for the light meter and with everything in the optical path realigning properly again.

If you got this far .... go back and read the first line again. I have used all Pentax cameras and the K1000 in my opinion is the pick of the K mount bodies assuming you don't need DOF,MLU or self timer which can all be overcome on the few occasions that they might be needed. You currently have a good camera which is working (mostly) but there is a good chance you will need to go further than you think and end up with more problems.

For the type of photo's I usually do I generally use a spot meter which even second hand are usually in the upper price range and worth more than the camera . But when I do only want to take a small hand held meter I have found the Sekonic L-188 to be excelant as it is nice and compact but easy to hold, operate and read without having to put glasses on. A quick search of Ebay should turn up a few at well under the $50.00 mark I would imagine.