Olympus Mju

When I bought the Canon Prima Zoom 85N I got a broken Olympus Mju along with it (and that was partly why I got that Canon in the first place).
I was hoping it would be in working order and the seller was just unaware of how to use the camera properly. Sadly it ended up being more complicated than that. Once I received it I had to realise that the mechanism that moves the lens doesn't work anymore so if I wanted to use it I actually had to get my hands dirty and fix it.

It's a pretty common sentiment in the community to write off any point and shoot with any slight electrical problems. Thankfully many problems are much more possible to fix than those people might think, you just have to be willing to work with some electronics.

Also, these problems are even simpler to solve if you have access to a donor camera. So I hopped on ebay and started to look for a non-working Olympus Mju that (very importantly) had a problem that was different to the one mine had.
I ended up purchasing one with a faulty winding mechanism for much more money than a broken point and shoot should cost but sadly the fact that the Olympus Mju is a bit of an over-hyped camera shined through the pricing from all the ebay sellers.

I received the second specimen in almost one piece. The little film window was knocked loose and was rattling inside the camera, the little metal ball inside the sliding door mechanism was missing and (not so surprisingly) the camera couldn't wind any film despite the motor's whirring making it obvious that it was trying as hard as it could.

At this point I disassembled both cameras to assess my situation and try to figure out which one should be the donor and which one should become the Ship of Thesesus. I should mention here that during this whole project this video from the channel Graindead was a great resource (as well as being an entertaining watch) and I recommend anyone who tries to do something similar to watch it as well.
After realising that swapping the whole lens and focusing mechanism would be way more difficult (though not impossible) I decided to fix the second camera instead.

It turns out that the winding problem was caused by one of the plastic gears on the bottom of the camera breaking, thus disconnecting the film winder rollers from the motor. Sadly these plastic gears are pretty securely connected to a metal plate and that plate is soldered to the flexible PCB that spans the entire front part of the camera (I assume for grounding/shielding purposes?). After desoldering this plate from both cameras, swapping them and soldering it back (just in case, I'm not sure it's really necessary) I had the camera working just fine.

Reassembling these is a pain in the ass but hopefully it was worth it.
I also glued the little window back, then cannibalised the little metal ball from the other camera as well so all the little things were working smoothly. One other benefit of having a donor camera is you can just swap around the different components depending on which camera had that in better (visual) condition.

The camera seems to be in a working state, though I haven't yet finished the first test roll, so I can't write about its supposedly crazy sharp 35mm lens. But once I get the images back I'll update this post so this will be more than just a retelling of a potentially successful repair story.