Okay, Gerry, a few things:
- The advance is under the top, and not too difficult to clean. It's lubricated with the same awful green gunk. You need to lift the linkage to clean and lube it; if you do this, it has to be realigned in order to advance the cocking mechanism fully. Also, I'm pretty sure there's some extra stuff (rangefinder, maybe the advance lever) that needs to come off to get to the advance train. Sounds rough, but is actually pretty straight forward and well worth the effort.
- Don't force the advance, because a primary gear in the mechanism (down inside the body, next to the helical) is made of plastic. Easily stripped, cracked, broken, and otherwise made useless. Once this happens, the camera is a paper weight. Unless Dean Williams can fabricate a replacement, and I'm not sure he's taking on work anymore.
- It'd be fairly easy to remove the lenses to test if the threads are compatible between cameras. However, I don't think that the shutters are swappable; I think there was a rework of the advance train in the interim. Again, would need to be disassembled to find out.
- In my experience with maybe a half dozen of these things, they're not worth the effort. The glass is wonderful, and a working one's a joy, but once that grease coagulates, someone will force the advance and destroy the gear, then it's all lost.
You've got nothing to lose working on it, so make it a learning experience. Or send it off, but be prepared for a hefty repair bill.
Scott
