Thanks to those who replied with advice on tackling the little Zuiko! I haven't
had so much fun taking something apart since I was a
little kid. The little mechanisms and linkages in even something as simple as
the 50mm f/1.8 are impressive, and it was with great
trepidation that I began the disassembly from the mount side. I managed to work
my way down to a plate covering the aperture blades,
but could not see an obvious way to remove that. Instead, I removed the
rearmost 3 lens elements, and was able to carefully squirt
degreaser on the blades, letting it run down to the bases of the blades and out
the rear whilst actuating the aperture mechanism.
After a few cycles of this the aperture was once again free and snappy, and I
had done no damage to the anterior lens elements!
Re-assembly would have been iffy had I not usefully employed my Olympus D340L
digital camera in 'macro' mode to document the
teardown going in. It was a snap to refer back to these images and get it all
back right.
Trickiest part was recalibrating the aperture! I think the repair could have
been done without disassembling this part going in, but
I didn't know it at the time. Fortunately I had another 50mm f/1.8 to compare
the f/16 aperture size to.
Would I do this with a 90mm f/2 Macro? Of course not! But it was a fun way to
kill a couple hours and rejuvenate a Zuiko.
Chip Stratton
cstrat@xxxxxxxxx
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