Kodak Retina IIa Rangefinder Adjustment

I bought a Retina IIa as a donor...my very nice IIa's rewind knob somehow went missing while out shooting. Not much wrong with it except shocking cosmetics (no leather on front door, front panels, or wind lever, a horrible engraving near eyepiece); hazy finder, non-working frame counter and RF disconnect, with RF patch not moving off infinity until 1/4 of the focus travel (the signal spar moves immediately). Having harvested the rewind knob, with nothing to lose I thought I'd try to get the donor IIa up and running.

The Retina IIa wind lever and rangefinder are thoroughly covered by Chris Sherlock. His pages should be consulted and followed...they gave me the resources (and courage) to tackle it. All I am doing here is documenting my own experience.

I was a bit concerned that the pin transmitting lens movement to rangefinder might be out of position. I asked Chris, and he was kind enough to reply:

"There is nothing to adjust regarding the travel of the pin on the spar of the rangefinder mechanism, and I doubt there is anything wrong with it. The adjustments are all to be made at the rangefinder. Rangefinders not following the focus action are down to one of two things, either the rangefinder is gummed up and doesn't return to the rest position, or the rangefinder is out of adjustment. this can happen through wear, or something shifting when the camera has been dropped. The adjustment is very critical and it is impossible to remove the rangefinder, clean it and replace it without having to adjust it again."

Sure enough, there was no problem adjusting the rangefinder, following Chris's instructions, to correctly contact the pin and focus accurately.

Before starting I worried that things might fly apart upon lifting the cover. Nothing comes jumping off; I just needed to keep body level so shutter and counter release buttons and assemblies/springs didn't fall off.

I found a couple of loose bits of metal under the top cover...a tiny screw and a fragment of spring. The accessory shoe is epoxyed on (minus screws) so that's where the screw came from; the tiny fragment of broken spring was diagnosed by Chris as being the business end of the frame counter pawl (ratchet spring). Sure enough, on reassembly, everything works except the frame counter. Viewfinder is pretty clear...I didn't clean the hard-to-get-at sides of the lenses adjacent to the rangefinder block; or the 45deg. exit end of the rangefinder suspecting it might be semi-silvered and easy to damage.

The jury-rigged rewind knob, a coin with a hole drilled and attached by a metric machine screw, that replaces the looted original knob even looks quite nice. Now, to find an intact counter ratchet spring. Would be nice to find a donor that really doesn't work for a ratchet spring, rewind knob and nicer top plate. Then I would go to cameraleather.com. (Anyone have a donor body, or a ratchet spring?)