That $180 eBay CLA kit wrecked my Canon AE-1 shutter

Bought a cheap CLA kit off eBay and tried to clean the shutter blades on my AE-1 on Saturday, ended up with oil on the curtain and a jammed mechanism. Had to send it to a proper shop in Portland for a $150 fix, anyone else get burned by those DIY kits?

3 comments

3 Comments

zara_sanchez22h ago

Honestly your real mistake was trusting an eBay CLA kit in the first place.

shanec6120h ago

Three hours of my life I will never get back after trying to adjust the float bowl with a pair of tweezers and a prayer @zara_sanchez. I figured hey, it's just a carburetor rebuild, how bad could a kit from eBay be? Turns out the gaskets were made of something that felt like thin cardboard and the brass parts had burrs that would snag a cotton swab. I even watched a video from some guy named "BikeWrenchMike" who made it look easy, but he didn't mention the o-ring would swell up like a balloon in gas. Lesson learned: next time I'm just paying the extra twenty bucks for a proper kit from the dealer.

danielm8017h ago

...and the worst part is you probably watched the same Mike's Camera Repair video I did, the one where he makes it look like you just need a steady hand and some q-tips. I did the same thing with a Pentax K1000 last year, thought I could save fifty bucks by flushing out the old grease with lighter fluid. Ended up with a shutter that would fire twice on every click and a prism that looked like a foggy window. The good shops around here in Tacoma were all backed up for weeks. It's that cheap Chinese solvent they put in those kits, I swear it's just mineral spirits with a fancy label. At least your fix was only $150, the guy who fixed mine called it a "full disassembly and rebuild" and charged me $200 before he even touched the curtain.