Can we talk about the grease situation on older Pentax shutters?

I was working on a Spotmatic from the late 60s this week and the shutter speeds were all over the place, like 1/1000 was acting like 1/60. A guy at the local camera club mentioned that old Pentax grease gets sticky after 40+ years and seeps into the mechanism. I took his advice and stripped the whole speed governor, cleaned it with lighter fluid, and put a tiny dab of new MoS2 grease on the pivot. Has anyone else run into this specific issue with the H battery corrosion too, or is it just me?

2 comments

2 Comments

bettymurphy1d ago

Feel ya on this one big time. Had a Spotmatic from '68 that was like molasses in January, all the slow speeds were just gone. Tried the lighter fluid trick on the governor myself and it fixed it right up, but man that H battery corrosion is a whole other nightmare. Found green crust all over the battery compartment on mine, had to scrape it out with a toothpick and vinegar. It's like these cameras have two totally separate ways to fall apart.

emmafisher1d ago

Wait, you had green crust all over your battery compartment too? @bettymurphy, that's insane, I thought mine was the only one that looked like a science experiment gone wrong.