Film advance lever stuck (Praktica camera)

Winchy

Winchy

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RICHARD WINCH
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I have been using a Praktica Nova ii for the past few months, but the wind lever has now stopped working. As I had only taken one picture on a new roll of film I thought that maybe rewinding the film would solve the problem, but no. The triangular 'signal' is showing which means the shutter isn't cocked. Does anyone here know if there's a simple fix (or even a complicated one)? Thanks!

FYI The Nova ii is a rebranded super TL1000 I have been told.
(I was going to add some pics of the camera, and i don't know if I'm being thick but I can't work out how you attach pictures to posts)
 
Do you mean the film wind on lever will only wind on the film once (which is correct as you can't wind on again until shutter is fired)....but it's not cocking the shutter?
Well if above, the camera is not worth the money to be repaired, so all you can do is to take the bottom plate off and carefully poke around with say a small screw driver as something might be stuck. You can get a rough idea how the windon\shutter cock works by moving the wind on lever slightly (might have some play left) and see what it's connected to.
good luck.
 
Thanks. I did try removing the base plate earlier and managed to fix another problem with it ( the rewind button would not unlock) but I could not see any mechanism connected to the shutter. I googled it and it seems Praktica designed their cameras differently from many other makers. But I might have another look later.
 
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To answer your question, yes, the lever moves as if it's already been wound, but the shutter button does not work and the 'signal' on the viewfinder is there which means the camera needs winding.
 
If fiddling with the internals has failed to rectify the problem, it might be worth trying some gentle IT (impact technology...) fairly gentle taps on a solid surface MIGHT cure the problem and if all else has failed, can't do any further harm. Pick the surface you might tap it on - you don't want to damage it (the surface!!!)
 
Thanks for that Nod, I'll give that a go later. When I googled it I found these make of cameras have a spring which sometimes goes wonky and causes this problem. I did try removing the top part of the camera to have a butchers, but I wasn't able to remove one of the screws even though the other three were no problem. Usually WD40 does the trick when all else fails but that doesn't see too clever for a camera, unless anyone else here has done it without any problem.
 
Nod said:
If fiddling with the internals has failed to rectify the problem, it might be worth trying some gentle IT (impact technology...) fairly gentle taps on a solid surface MIGHT cure the problem and if all else has failed, can't do any further harm. Pick the surface you might tap it on - you don't want to damage it (the surface!!!)
Click to expand...

we used to refer to that as "percussive maintenance" :)
 
TheBigYin said:
we used to refer to that as "percussive maintenance" :)
Click to expand...


IT was impact technology way back before IT was a career path! Dad used the expression whenever something needed a gentle tap, like the TV when the vertical hold went squiffy!
 
@Woodsy has taken the word "gentle" to a new level when fixing his Mamiya 645. Luckily he only whacked it onto the table instead of throwing it into the lake! The poor beastie is now so terrified it's been excellently behaved ever since!
 
Stuck shutter on the Canon T90? h'mm well you have nothing to lose by holding the shutter button down and bringing the body down quite hard on the carpet...so it does work for all cameras as a last resort.
 
Stuck Bendix on a starter motor? - Hit it hard.
Stuck shutter on a T90? - Hit it hard, then throw it in the bin.
 
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