Restoring Helios 40 – 85mm f/1.5 – CLA tutorial by Tomas Glavina

by viktor pavlovic · Published December 3, 2017 · Updated December 3, 2017

Disclaimer!

Publisher – Verybiglobo.com and the author – Tomas Glavina are not taking responsibility for any damage of your equipment – lenses, tools or other material property, that might happen as a result of the instructions or suggestions in this tutorial. We are also not taking any responsibility for the potential injuries or other health risks that might occur.

The results are highly dependent on the user ability and skills, on the type and quality of the used tools and on the condition of the particular item in question.

We strongly suggest that you take all possible precautions in order to protect your health. Use-wear protection – glasses, gloves, mask. Whenever using chemicals, iron wool or other potentially dangerous substances for inhalation, do it outdoor in the well-ventilated conditions.

If you are not sure about your skills, we strongly advise you not to follow those instructions!

Take the above disclaimer into considerations before you try to follow this tutorial.

Do it at your own risk!

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This tutorial is first in the series of hopefully many more to come. Click on the link bellow to find out how you can participate in the project and how you can support us.

INFO

Written by Tomas Glavina

This tutorial is sponsored by Tea! Tea is our most loyal supporter for over 2 years and we can hardly find the words to express our gratitude! She is a dear member of Verybiglobo family!

Introduction:

In my first tutorial, I showed how to CLA one of the most popular legacy lenses – Russian Helios 44. In this tutorial, you will see how to CLA its bigger cousin the Helios 40. The two lenses are very similar in their construction, so I warmly recommend to take a look at the Helios 44 tutorial first, the one that is a reference to the upcoming legacy lens CLA series. Ideally, you should first try to restore Helios 44, a cheaper lens, to get a grip on how it works. This tutorial will have similar steps to the reference one.

In order to write the tutorial, I have to perform full restoration in advance, to double-check that everything works as described. This includes aluminum housing polishing procedure so don’t be surprised that lens looks neat from the start.

There is one big important difference between the two lenses, the big part with the mount of the Helios 40 is made of brass and should NOT be polished with the iron wool.

A short legend of the terms and abbreviations used in the tutorial:

CW – clock wise,
CCW – counter clock wise,
MDF – minimum focusing distance,
Outer or external ring – the ring that you use to focus for example,
Inner ring – usually covered by the outer ring – the actual focusing ring.

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