Lens hood barn door jamming
 

Even though I haven't used it much recently (my EX1 with either the RR matte box, or Letus adapter for most of the time) - or perhaps because of not being used? - the stock lens hood's barn door seem to become more and more difficult to open and close.

I don't feel any constant resistance to the knob up / down movement (or any feeling of friction inside the hinges), but it happened to me several times that it completely jammed (only very careful trials managed to move it); also when it does jam, only one of the doors moves (either direction).

I remember Bob mentioning he had to use some graphite to lubricate his; however - as I said - I not so much feel any friction resistance, but intermittent jamming of the whole mechanism...

Has anyone disassembled his EX lens hood, and could share the experience?

My first pass at fixing the lens hood was to disassemble it and lubricate the appropriate parts with graphite as I'd done in the past with the Z1 hoods that had become stuck. The problem is that the rubber front section is glued on and that covers the screws. I guess if you're very careful you maybe able to peel the rubber off to get to the screws and then glue it back on.
The problem with the Z1 hood and I assume the EX hood is the plastic pins and cams bind. Adding graphite that seems to embed itself into the plastic fixes the problem, maybe for good. Certainly the Z1 hood has been going OK for over a year now.
Without pulling the EX unit apart I found there's a few holes in the body and I puffed liberal amounts of graphite in there, operated the mechanism many times and also blasted a bit of canned air into the housing as well. Pretty quickly the mechanism felt much freerer.
I then blew and sucked as much surplus graphite out as I could. That fixed the problem.
The down side is for quite a while after flecks of graphite were finding their way onto the filter. It's quite harmless and easily cleaned off and a minor issue compared to jammed barn doors on the lens hood. Thing is even if you bought a new hood I imagine it'll soon possibly develop the same problem.

If you want to see what's inside I got my original inspiration from Douglas Spotted Eagle's article on how to fix the Z1 hood. The article seems to have vanished from the web though.

Same deal here..... used olive oil.....
Is there anything that isn't failing on this camera?

Here is the link for the how to fix guide by DSE... Chris, maybe this needs to be a sticky somewhere on the board if it is not already, did not see it.

Repair your own Sony HVR-Z1U or FX1 lens hood!

Interesting .... I couldn't find that on the VASST site. Very likely because it's not there but on the old Sundance site you've referenced (carries the VASST logo).

My quick fix
 

For those of you who don´t wanna be left with leftover pieces after dismantling the lens hood, here is my quick fix, which worked a charm.......

After shooting the Erzberg Rodeo last weekend(which is the dustiest shoot of my year), my barn doors were also jammed and I knew it was as a result of the dust.(spent 4 hours on monday morning cleaning my cam....)

I submerged the entire lens hood in a basin of water and rinsed it untill there was no more colouration of the water draining out of it.

then I packed it in an air tight bag with silica gel packs for 2 days.(for drying purposes)

once it was dry, I lubricated the moving parts with silicon spray, which is anti static and will not attract and trap other dust particles, like olive oil might.

now it is working even better (smoother) than when it was brand new out of the box.

worked for me.

I also used the silicon spray on the batt release button, which has been jammed since winter, this worked like a charm too.