[Leica] M8 Shutter Fault, Help!

[rbaron at concentric.net (Robert D. Baron)]

Tina writes from India:

> My intrepid M8 locked up this morning while I was shooting photos 
> from a boat in southern India. No, I didn't drop it in the water!  I 
> was using the 75/1.4 lens and when I pressed the shutter button, 
> instead of going snkclk, the M8 just went snk and "Shutter Fault" 
> showed up on the screen.  When I removed the lens, I could see that 
> the bottom edge of the top blade of the shutter is stuck slightly 
> behind the top edge of the second blade.  It looks like I could just 
> flip the edge up and over and everything would be fine, but my 
> business manager insists that I write to the LUG for advice before I 
> touch anything inside the M8.  I'm used to making repairs on my film 
> M's but haven't attempted much inside the digital ones.  We have four 
> more days in India and I'd hate not to have my M8 for Mumbai.
> 
> Has anybody seen this fault and fixed it?  TIA for any advice.

Unfortunately: yes I have seen it, and no I did not fix it.

If memory serves (a sometime thing) that sounds *exactly* like what 
happened to my first M8 last May after around 30 days of ownership.  I 
remember discussing it with SonC and some others via email at the time 
(it of course happened on a weekend, but I was at a dog show in Shawnee 
Oklahoma, not half a world away) and I thought I had a photo of the hung 
up shutter but I can't now find it.  What happened, after some phone 
calls that Monday, I wound up shipping it to Leica NJ and they replaced it.

Now this is the hazy part:  I vaguely remember a later phone 
conversation with Robert Fisk (who was then in the service department, I 
understand he has since departed Leica) about whether I could have fixed 
it myself and he said 'no'.

Having said that, if I were in your situation I would give it a try 
anyway, as has previously been discussed.

Good luck!

--Bob