These pages describe how I repaired the control dial on my Canon A2E. Please see the first page of this series for the background. This page contains several photographs and may take a minute to load.

To remove the top cover I found and removed the rest of the screws. Again, these are of various lengths, so it was important to prevent mix-ups when reassembling later. These photos show the screw locations. 

One screw is located inside the battery compartment. This chrome-plated screw is the only one on the camera that isn't black. It was not necessary to remove the screw below the battery compartment.

I then removed the screw located below the camera strap ring near the LCD.

To remove the remaining two screws it was necessary to slide off the rubber eye cup. One screw is located at either side of the view finder.

When the last screw was removed, the cover lifted away from the body easily; no force was required. However, several cables prevented complete removal. It was necessary to handle the camera very carefully at this point; the buttons that operate the flash and self-timer could easily be knocked out of the top cover, a number of small-gauge wires were soldered to points within the top cover and on the front of the body, and the flex-cable for the flash is very thin (although it is likely Mylar-insulated and quite tough). The photo below shows the camera at this point in the disassembly process.

The flex-cable to the flash assembly was removable. By unplugging this I was able to tilt the top cover forward for more working room. The connector for this appeared to be quite fragile, so I was very careful to slide the flex-cable straight toward the front of the body and out of the mating slot with one hand, while holding the connector body firmly in place with the other hand. Reinserting this later will prove to be a challenge. The connector with the cable still in place is shown in the red circle above.

Now the body was disassembled as far as I was willing to take it. Even so, there wasn’t a lot of finger room for the next operation.

Next, removing the control dial.