Last spring in North Carolina I was offered three defective or incomplete examples of Argus CR-1 SLR body. It was my intent to combine parts of the three to make up one good one.
As of this week I have managed to reconstruct three that will function.

The camera was built in Japan under contract for Argus USA. Ron Norwood in North Carolina could supply the details on exactly when, where, and who did the manufacturing. Ron is the Expert on such info.

This last is the worst of the lot, it is what I has left after restoring the other two. I had no name plate for this one, so filled the name area with a piece of black duct tape.
I did not have a third battery cover for the bottom, so a steel washer and packaging tape had to suffice. The meter works fairly well.
There is fuzzy stuff in the viewfinder. After disassembling the top of the camera and removing the prism, I found that the fuzzy stuff is internal to the one piece solid glass prism, and so it was reassembled as is.
Shutter (metal blades running vertically) was still working perfectly, with a solid sure precision.
It is hard to put a good camera down.

This camera is universal 42mm screwmount with internal auto stopdown lever plate. Halfway on the shutter release button will stop down an auto aperture lens while it switches on the metering circuit. Metering is center-the-needle full manual.

For my test, I used two lenses. One is the sometimes maligned Fujinon f:2.2 / 55mm. Mine was a camera show bargain and needed a rubber band and pieces of black tape for cosmetic fixes. In this test, I think the lens performed admirably.
The other lens is a "VEMAR" wide angle f:2.8 / 35mm with two-ring "preset" manual aperture control. I think it also performed admirably, and I forget which lens was which in the results.

My test location was the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis County. This place is a treasure chest that must be maintained for all future generations.
I exposed one roll of Walgreens ASA 200 film.

Please click on thumbnail images to see enlargement.
Al images are ©2010 E.J.Kowalski.