Spent 3 hours chasing a shutter bug that turned out to be one bent pin

Had a customer's old Canon AE-1 on the bench last Tuesday, shutter firing fine at 1/1000 but dragging at slow speeds like 1/15. I pulled the bottom plate, cleaned the magnet, checked the timing with my tester, even swapped in a known good mirror box from a parts body. Turned out the whole problem was a single bent pin on the shutter release flex connector, took me 3 hours to spot something a 10 second wiggle test would have found. Now I keep a cheap USB microscope on the bench for exactly this kind of thing. Any of you got a quicker way to catch bad pins on these old connectors before you tear the whole camera apart?

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gracewebb10d ago

Yep, wiggle test every connector first now.

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brown.gavin10d ago

Oh yeah, learned that one the hard way. Spent two hours chasing a no-start on an old truck once, swapping relays and testing grounds, and it was just a loose plug at the harness that looked fine sitting still. Wiggle everything while it's running or cranking, that's the only way you catch the intermittent stuff. Takes five minutes and saves you a whole afternoon of guessing.

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