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Battery wire of an Olympus 35 RC

by M. Feuerbacher, 2003.

This camera was electrically dead when it arrived. The repair approach shown here is not at all straightforward, but this is how repair attempts often go. I nevertheless I present all the pictures I made, maybe they help you with some other problem.

When the camera is electrically dead the first thing to do is to check the battery wire. In most cases corrosion due to acid from old batteries causes the problem.

Open the bottom cover. Indeed in my specimen the - contact was corroded. (The + connection is alway over the metal camera body).

There was electrical contact between the - contact and the body, so something was obviously wrong here.

I was not able to get out the battery compartment, so I tried to reach its back from the front of the camera.

Open the top cover. Be careful with the self-timer lever. The screw attaching it is left handed.

Peel off the leatherette, this is quite easy for Olympus cameras. The material does normally not tend to tear.

Remove the two metal shields.
Underneath you find four screws holding the front lens barrel with its back plate.
I noticed that the self timer has to be removed in order to detach the front lens. It is attached by the two screws shown here.
The self timer can be taken out as a whole.

The lens-barrel back plate still cannot be removed. It bends over the top, and all the time-setting mechanism has to be detached.....

...because this screw has to be removed.

It seems to be very tedious to remove the lens barrel of an Olympus RC.

I started to reconsider my approach and found that I could gently bend back the front-lens barrel and look into the gap.....

... where I found this broken white wire.

I started to wiggle out the battery compartment gently. It is attached to the body by two short pins and is additionally glued.

You can directly go this way. It is not necessary to mess around with the lens barrel as I did.

The battery wire is soldered to the bottom of the screw holding the lid in the battery compartment. Be very careful when you solder it, because the plastic starts melts very quickly.

Resoldering the white wire to this screw brought my RC back to life. Reassembly is straightforward.