When Things Break You Will Start To Panic!
And so it happened to me when I actually had to get some work done, wanted to take off my battery grip of the Canon 5D Mark2 and it gut stuck! I then tried to force the wheel into moving. and it did move, unfortunately, it did not advance the mechanism and just turned and turned.
By the time I had no idea how to manage to get it off. The huge frustration was, the camera was rendered completely useless I would have gotten the grip either on or off. None of it seemed possible.
After doing some research I found out the reason for the issue. The gearbox within the grip is made out 3 gears of which one was made out of plastic and the other two were metal. This could not hold forever. And as the plastic gear shredded into pieces I was left with an expensive piece of a useless camera if I could not figure out a solution.
Getting The Battery Grip Off The Camera Body
This undertaking proved to become the hardest task of all. It took me a while to think about a solution as I did not want to break something in the camera and was somehow hoping to still be able to be using the grip.
After some thinking, I decided to heat up a knife and to cut the plastic wheel. With some patience, I managed to break out piece by piece which then allowed access to reach into the gear-box with a screwdriver. After loosening up some shredded plastic pieces the metal gears became lose again and I could use the screwdriver to advance the tripod mount screw directly.
And tada, one hour later, I finally got the battery grip off of the camera body.
Ordering A Spare Part
I called Canon Repair center to help me out with how to replace it. I did not see a reason why I should send it in for such a minor fix and they were actually quite helpful telling me how the spare part is called and where to order it.
If you want to or have to repair your battery grip, the part is called DIAL ASS’Y TRIPOD. Cost and delivery should be around $30-$45 USD depending on where you get it from. Replacement is super easy as well and much quicker than having to send the whole thing in. I mainly opted for repairing it myself because after getting the grip off, I was able to use the camera again.
Replacing The Tripod Mount Gear Box
As I said, replacing the gear-box is super easy. You can watch me going through the whole process in the video. The only tool you need to take the cover off is a little screwdriver. Then, take out 7 screws, remove the cover plate and the gearbox which is also mounted on a metal plate.
From there it is just putting in the new plate that already has the gearbox mounted, put the plate back on, get the screw back in and voila, tour BG-E6 Battery grip is ready to be used again. And the best thing, it will probably not happen again as Canon changed out the plastic gear for a metal one in the replacement part. The whole replacement process took me only five minutes.
Why You Should Replace Your Tripod Mount Gear Box Before It Breaks
Whilst replacing the defective part was super quick and easy, getting off the BG-E6 Battery Grip was not! All the frustration and work I had to go through not knowing of the potential issue, because if I knew I would have replaced it before it got broken.
This is also the advice I can give to anyone owning the same battery grip for a 5D Mark2. Get this little piece before it is too late and your grip gets stuck on your camera. It really is not worth waiting and trying to save money as it will only be a matter of time until the gear will shred into pieces.
