Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Zeiss scope has fungus on interior lens!

I have a new in box(never mounted) Zeiss Diavari 3-9x36(made in Germany).
Finally found the right rifle for this scope and am ready to put it to use.

Scope doesn’t have a mark on it and has never been back to zeiss for service until recently when I noticed the interior surface of the objective lens looks to be starting to cloud up from the outer edge towards the center.

Just got word from Zeiss USA warranty repair
service this past week that what appears to be clouding of interior surface of the objective lens is actually fungus.

They say that this is not considered a defect in materials/workmanship and that the optic is not repairable. They don’t want to open up the scope and clean off the interior surface of the lens due to the possibility of contaminating their facility.

My beef is that it seems the optic was contaminated during production to begin with since it has never been used or tinkered with(again, it is new in box).

Anybody have any experience with this?

Is there any reputable aftermarket repair facility anywhere that can fix this issue?

Looking through the scope, the image appears unaffected by the fungus at this point but I can see this becoming a problem down the road.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Leftybolt

If they can't fix or repair it, they should at least exchange it for a new scope. You would also think the fungus came from them when they put it together. That should go through warranty with no issues at all. I'd fight them on it. It shouldn't take much convincing on your part.

How do they know its a fungus if they didn't open it/contaminate the facility?

Unless of course, this isn't the first from that lot they've seen with the issue and had the answer before it got there.

bsa1917hunter,

I hope you are right. I’m going to fight this if necessary.

But honestly, I would rather have this scope fixed than replaced. I love these little scopes. It’s unfortunate that Zeiss no longer manufactures them.

Leftybolt

Good question…?

They just say, “their repair experts can tell” and they aren’t willing to risk it.

Leftybolt

Yeah, that is a shame. The last one I sent in had what looked like a tiny spider on the inside of the lens. Had to have been there when they put it together. They replaced it with a scope of more value, but similar to what I had. I can't complain too much. Oddly enough the guy I dealt with was the technician that actually looked at the scope. His name was Ben and was very helpful. His manager was an idiot, and I told Ben I'd rather deal with him if at all possible. Good luck with yours, but it will likely not get fixed. They seem to prefer to replace them instead.

“Not considered a defect in materials/worksmanship”??

How the hell else do MOLD (fungus) SPORES get inside a scope??

Unless they have reason to think you fished it out of deep water, this is pretty ridiculous. Any of you guys aware of this being a problem with 60 year-old Redfield/Weaver/Leupold scopes???

I have had great CS from Zeiss in the past. I would go up the chain. If the scope has never been opened other than by them building it there are only two ways fungus would get in it.

1. Manufacturing issue with contamination in the tube when it was built.

2. Later one of the seals went bad and moisture got it in. Again that is a defect on their part.

Keep us posted. Spence

Exactly this^^

Man that’s a drag! I’ve not had good experience with Zeiss service. After several months of back and forth they finally admitted they lost a spotting scope I sent in for repair. Their only solution was to offer me credit towards an “upgrade” and I still had to come out of pocket like $800 since the one I sent in was no longer made. I was furious, but what could I do? I needed a spotting scope and certainly couldn’t buy another comparable one for that price.

Probably a one off mistake, but the way they handled it was inexcusable. Zeiss CS blows, in my experience.

How old is this scope? I don't think a scopes seals last infinitely . That said I would stay on them about it.

From a pure science/curiosity perspective - what's the fungus living on in there?

I've had great CS from Zeiss in the past. I hope they get it resolved for you, but what you have cannot be called a new scope. It's been a LONG time since that model was offered.

Cameraland Doug could prolly help you with Zeiss

Been seeing more Zeiss than I’d like with $h!t in the internals, always on the lens’s in my case. I’ve had 2 pair of binoculars with black specs to the point of being very noticeable, it’s the anodizing or paint coming off. Also had a new scope with the same issue, note these are not their lower lines. Also this isn’t some barely not noticeable thing some like to bitch about, this actually effects the view, it’s very evident immediately when you look through them.

As to fungus, that’s usually a death sentence to get someone to open it up, UV light/sunlight should kill or stop the growth if I’m not mistaken. If you keep it stick it out in direct sunlight a few hours, there’s more on this on birdforum just do a search.

Pitch yeast in hot wort and it dies. I wonder what temp would be needed to sterilize that scope.

Shining a UV flashlight through the scope might work? I have one for curing glue/epoxy on flys.

I have never had a Zeiss with that issue , on the other hand I sent two Kahles scopes back to Austria because of black specks.

..

The Diavaris weren't totally sealed: The insides of the adjustment turrets were open to the air once you took the caps off. In fact I am pretty sure none of the Zeiss scopes were totally sealed until the introduction of the first Conquests in the late 1990s.

This was common with European scopes for many years--except for Kahles, which starting sealing everything including the turrets in the 1960s.

I know this partly due to touring all the Zeiss factories with several other American optics writers in 1993. It turned out they mostly wanted us to go back and tell American hunters they were stupid for not buying more Zeiss scopes, because they were SO much better than anything else.

But one day we had an interesting conversation--after finding out the turrets weren't sealed. This was initiated by Jim Carmichel, for decades the shooting columnist for Outdoor Life.

He asked why they didn't seal the turrets, because if the turret caps were removed they would allow not only humidity but other microscopic stuff inside the scopes.

The head German guy then asked, "But vy vould you effer remove them?"

This may seem like an odd question, but back then (and probably still to a certain extent today) the average German hunter was pretty wealthy. They had to be, because it's very expensive to hunt over there. Consequently they also tended to buy expensive rifles and scopes--and had their gunsmith do all the work, including mounting the scope and sighting-in the rifle, usually on an indoor range. So his question was due to vast cultural differences.

I explained that American hunters usually did sight-in their own rifles, and often tweaked the adjustments after traveling to other places that might be far more humid, such as coastal Alaska.

We also explained that many American hunters preferred lighter scopes, because many didn't hunt from hochsitzes (high seats, usually permanent treestands), which could be seen almost everywhere in Germany as we traveled by bus between the three Zeiss factories. Most Americans also didn't want to pay as much for their scopes.

It was hard to gauge the reaction of the Zeiss folks, but a few years later they introduced the first Conquests, which were much lighter, and aldo less expensive--partly because they were mostly made by Meopta, with only the erector-lens assembly being made by Zeiss.

Swarovski also didn't seal their scope turrets until around 2000 or so, and were also pressured into it by American writers who grew weary of doing "dunk tests" with their scopes with the caps removed, and seeing streams of bubbles coming out through the turrets. (Dunking was one of the standard things done back then when testing scopes for magazine articles, partly because a lot of cheaper Asian scopes had started showing up.) I know one of the writers deliberately left a scope underwater for longer than needed for the test--and there was water inside the scope when it was returned to Swarovski.