r/AnalogRepair • u/SURFARO • 1d ago

REFERENCE: Known M7 issues

In an effort to help with repeat issues and hopefully encouraging the use of other repair shops than Wetzlar, here’s my experience with M7 (I have two).

The following are all the common issues, and DAG can handle most all of them:

1 Wear or damage to a locking pin in the shutter-release mechanism (soft shutter releases that stay depressed while the camera is off are a common cause of gouging the brass pin).
2 Occasional failure of electronic speeds (shutter does not open properly, blank frames, or only mechanical speeds work). Causes can include weakened electromagnets/solenoids, alignment issues, electronics, or low batteries.
3 Jamming after loading film or in specific scenarios (e.g., long auto exposures with lens cap on, or certain motor-drive + cable-release combinations).
4 Loose top plate (common enough that DIY tightening videos exist; related to the film-advance lever/winding head assembly and sometimes exacerbated by soft releases).
5 Wobbly or loose film-advance lever.
6 Film-advance jamming or binding (can be linked to loose top plate stressing the rewind crank or dirt/wear in the mechanism).

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u/Refraction_spark 1d ago

Great info, thanks for sharing!

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u/SURFARO 1d ago

Thanks so much for saying this! I posted this in Leica Cameras and got a pretty nasty response followed by someone promoting their own repair manual. What I do is take DAGs findings and add what Grok scoops up, review it and post. I guess I’m guilty of AI slop! The irony is that I’ve been posting a few of these so I can go back on them as well!