The lens is not the important in this blog post, it can apply to many lens with stuck retainer ring. I bought this lens for my ETRS quite cheap from eBay because it had very bad fungus behind the front element. I thought this should be a simple clean up. However, when I received the lens and unscrewed the name plate, I found someone had tried to remove the front element and made a mess of the retaining ring. When I tried to unscrew the ring, it was tight and could not unscrew the ring. I can understand why it is like that. In the end it did come off! Here are the steps I took to remove the ring.
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| The Bronica150mm |
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| This is what I found after removing the name plate |
1. The first step is to unscrew the whole front assembly from the lens. It makes it a lot easier to work on the lens.
2. Soak with lighter fluid overnight, no good.
3. Soak with WD40 overnight, no good.
4. Soak with WD40 and then heat the outside of the lens assembly with hair drier. When I was heating I can see the WD40 boiling in the thread. I was able to unscrew the retainer ring. It was still tight though.
In the end, the fungus was quite easy to remove. I cleaned with soupy water and all the fungus came away. There was no damage to the front element. When I reassembled the lens, I added a small amount of lithium grease on all the thread. Hopefully, in future it will not be stuck.
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