take mine! 

BTW im letting go mine 

Picture:

OK deal! *taking the lens that i took these pics *

weixuan: I'd bite the bullet - they do occasionally come back with a cheaper repair.

Also, they lie about lens motor - there is no lens motor in the 16-80mm!

That said if you really don't want to take the risk, you could remove the AF screw drive screw - just unscrew the back and you should be able to take out the AF screw with little fuss. The process is reversible! Or at least it seemed easy on my Tamron 200-400mm F5.6...

Removing the AF screw might not solve the focus ring being stuck at 1 meter, though... any true technician will be able to fix this. So you might as well send it to a technician to fix the 1 meter problem. Only if it gets gear stripped then you remove the AF screw.

rah@: To be honest, Sony Malaysia repair is run by some dumb ****s who won't do that for you because it's not in their procedure book. However, yes, it is very much possible to remove the AF screw.

i *ehem* opened a 1680 before, and its a lot harder then 55-200 and tamron 1750 combined! (and 200400 is the easiest!) the clutching part is the most difficult to understand!

the 1680 common issue was the clutching sitting at the front, far front at the focusing ring. u will notice when AF is running, the focusing ring is not turning like 55-200 or 1855 but when u hold it and turn, it turns the focusing plane. that clutch mechanism, wasnt the best design. there is this 3 screw that catches the 3 small plastic thing, which can break or goes loose overtime and got off the 'placing' that causes the issue "unable to turn the focusing ring. or turning it for xx amount of turn. but the AF still works proper just MF jams up. and slowly it get worst when the plastic thing drop off, and cause whole AF to jammed up.

so u have to bite the bullet to let sony do their job, this is something beyond our normal reach because, its kinda very difficult to put that plastic back to their placing and screw it back (because they move around when u try to screw them) it took me 3 hours redoing the screw many time until i get it right, that is the first and last i will ever touch a 1680, its really difficult to handle it.