Duncan Brown

Fascinating stuff. So only about 150 of them ever made? I guess sometimes things are rare for a reason. Interesting it says this Georg Thoma made crystal sync motors for the Arri 16ST, but so did Georg Jensen in Denmark. So many Georgs in the crystal sync motor business. Duncan

I've seen a lot of different connectors on Perfectone motors, not necessarily all stock - it's an easy swap if you want to accomplish something else. Maybe the pilot tone signals are on that connector too? Duncan

Bold strategy. After getting no bids whatsoever with an opening bid of $4699 he's relisted it as a Buy It Now auction... at $6999! With no Make Offer option. So yeah, that auction may be there a long time... https://www.ebay.com/itm/355882556086 Duncan

I hate including an ebay link in a post, because a couple of months from now the link will be dead, and someone searching this site years from now will be really frustrated. HOWEVER, you don't see a Bolex PRO every day so this seems worth posting: https://www.ebay.com/itm/355841511332 It's a legit seller (I bought some ACL mags from him and received them in short order) so at least it's not the usual scams, but obviously no way to know for sure the condition; he's just a bulk reseller. I'll try to at least attach some pics from the auction, for the historical record. Duncan

Ah yes perfect, there you go! S16 markings with the original marking still there in case you want to frame for 4:3. Best of all worlds! Duncan

I agree that's behaving like a mirror-parking motor though it's interesting that it more or less ends up at the right spot on its own and the "parking wiggle" is minor to nonexistent. The proof is kind of in the fact that once it's stopped you always have a perfect view through the viewfinder! (That being the point of mirror parking after all.) And you are correct that the inching knob is not nearly as critical a piece on a camera with a mirror that parks in the right spot. On a spool-loading camera like an Arri 16S, you really need the inching knob to help with loading the film, but on a magazine-loading camera like this...not so much under normal circumstances. We never asked, because we were just going by the pictures, but since you have it there in your hands: is there a little icon on the motor cover (the one you took off to see about the inching knob) that looks like a windshield? (I guess it's supposed to look like the shape of the mirror.) That's the other proof, if that's there and just wasn't obvious to us in the farther away pictures. Your viewfinder video brings up another question: what are the ground glass marking like? From that video we can see the original regular-16mm markings, but is there some other marking or shading in the S16 aspect ratio? Glad to hear this camera may live again! Duncan

Lubricant in with the coupler seems unnecessary, but as long as it's something like silicone which won't eat rubber it shouldn't really hurt anything. Duncan

OK so it looks like the clutch assembly would have been in that circular well in the body surrounding the motor shaft, whereas I think on some other motors it was farther away on the shaft. It looks to me like that's a screw thread there, going into the motor shaft. If you could remove that nub of screw, you could theoretically put on a new clutch/knob assembly, though goodness knows where you'd find one. Though it worries me that if it's broken off like that, it's because the motor is stuck. But here's how to find out, since you don't seem shy to disassemble things a bit: remove the motor from the camera body. Three long screws and pull it off... VERY CAREFULLY!!! Very straight. Bit by bit. Don't lever it off of center at all. There's a very very fragile mini connector in there whose housing will break if you get it off axis. I'll attach a picture of what it will look like. There's a motor shaft with two pins, that goes into a rubber coupling, which goes onto a shaft in the motor body with a similar two pin arrangement/ The rubber coupling will likely stay with the motor or the body as you pull it apart - don't lose it! SO at that point you should be able to turn the motor by hand, if it's free. You should also be able to reach into the camera body hole, easier if the rubber coupling is on the shaft in the body, and sort of turn it with your pinky, to see if the camera mechanism turns freely. Duncan

That motor looks a little different from the ones I've seen, so I'm not entirely sure how it would have been originally, but I will say the ACL motors Ive dealt with have deceptively complicated inching knobs. They're one-way-clutched. I'm not sure if that's so you can't inch them backwards (who cares) or so they don't grab a string from the camera operator's sweater and end up choking them to death... Duncan

A curious/nosy/obnoxious lot indeed! Oh, and if you do decide to part it out, it's pretty clear we're also a ravenous lot when it comes to scarce ACL parts! (I still want to know what the Visual Products box it comes with is.) Duncan

There's an in-between level of buyer (I am one of them) willing to be optimistic about the unknowns, based on what can be determined as knowns, so willing to pay more than parts prices, but not top dollar. I have been seriously burned a couple of times like that, and have had great wins a couple of times... it balances out over time. And the burns sometimes at least leave me with spare parts to help salvage the next sad case (though at the moment I don't have any ACL spares... very few people do, it seems.) I just hope it goes to someone who can and will use it, whoever pays for the service and needed parts. Nothing sadder than a good camera in a closet. Duncan

In the current (not-as-roaring-as-recently) market, I wonder if spending all the money and time on a complete service is even going to pay off enough in an increased sale price. That's the kind of thing that only truly pays off if you USE your investment back out of it, as the new owner. (Which sucks for the seller, who has to take comparatively less for it, but there you are.) Duncan

I was just going to say, you are in a prime position to tell us just how hard/expensive it is to find the correct motor for one of these cameras, if the one it has isn't up to snuff 🙂 Duncan

Oh good catch! I also don't see the mirror-parking symbol on it, which you would expect for an ACL2 era motor. Found another ACL2 picture online, with a sheared off inching knob, but it doesn't look like this. You can see the guts of the one-way clutch, etc on that one, this is just a little hole in the cover. Duncan

I figured that was the on/off switch for the built in exposure meter? Duncan