Stripping Nikkor 43-86mm stuck glasses

sssboa wrote:

Hi

So I am stripping Nikkor 43-86mm. the threaded rings are really stuck. I used a release fluid like for stuck screws on one and it worked. But nothing works on this. Any idea?

I got stuck on this stuck ring You can see that I have tried

Ouch!

There is a slim chance some idiot glued it with loctite. In any case, the best way I can think of is to try a mild thermal shock to break whatever bond is holding it. For that, just let a hair drier heat it up a bit and then try as it's cooling. You can even do a bit more by heating and then using ice in a plastic bag held against the metal plate to try to get it to shrink a bit, but too much thermal shock can damage things (i.e., crack a lens element).

I suppose there is also a tiny possibility that it is a reverse threaded part: i.e., righty-loosey rather than lefty-loosey.

In any case, don't force it.

There are options like trying to get a touch of WD40 to the thread, but that can easily cause more problems because you don't want WD40 getting spread around inside a lens.

sssboa wrote:

I have tried release liquid for stuck screws to no avail. It worked in other places in this lens which had been stuck too. I don't think the lens had been messed with before.

Try the thermal shock -- that's what I'd have tried first. Just blow on it with a hair drier to get it warm and then try it as it cools.

sssboa wrote:

After putting all together I have excessive softness on edges. I must have put a glass wrong way.

Very possible; I don't have a copy of this lens.... There is a detailed discussion of this lens and the following diagram at NIKKOR - The Thousand and One Nights No.4 :

The catch is, the 43-86mm is a notoriously bad lens. I would describe the above Nikon page as largely apologetic about the lens performance, explaining that it was the first standard Zoom from Japan, and poorer optically but lots smaller than the German Voigtlander Zoomar 36-82mm f/2.8 which they describe as "one would have to be hard pushed to say that the performance it offered was sufficient for practical purposes."

Even Nikon-loving Ken Rockwell calls it "the worst lens Nikon has ever made." A more detailed trace of the evolution of this lens over many years of production is at mir . To put it bluntly, it was the first real example of a "cheap kit zoom" and in many ways is responsible for setting the IQ bar rather low on kit zooms in general. "Excessive softness on edges" is something fully working copies of this lens are known for.

Anyway, the point is that zooms in general are never IQ stars and this one isn't a contender for being one of the best. It was one of the most popular despite that. My advice would be to set your IQ expectations lower and see if you can find a way to leverage what it does to make good images....

sssboa wrote:

I never understood these graphs.

MTF graphs? Pretty simple. They plot % contrast, typically looking at an image of either 10 or 30 line pairs per mm. Here's a decent walk through.

There were no elements concave on both sides.

That would be very surprising. They might not be very concave, but I'd expect at least one such element in a zoom like this....

This is great lens btw, there are many iterations of it, the first one that I also have was not good by today standards, the next ones are good at least. I don't agree with most reviewers on most lenses and cameras, sorry.

You might be alone in that opinion on the 43-86mm... which even Nikon seems mildly ashamed of.    That said, the later versions were markedly less bad than the original. They still didn't compete well against the competition in the late 1970s and 1980s. That doesn't mean they are unusable or that you can't make good photos using them....