Honestly, isn't that just overthinking it? I get the whole "they cared about feel" thing, but come on, it's just some screws. If the design was so great, why did they stop doing it? Modern lenses work fine without needing a special manual and a torque wrench. It feels like people just romanticize old stuff and find reasons to call it genius. Maybe it was just the easiest way to assemble it back then, not some deep user experience choice.

Yeah, @paul286 has it right, it's all about the CO2 boost.

Always get a phase one environmental report before closing, it's cheap insurance against this exact mess.

That's a rough eight hours for a bad cap. I get being thorough, but swapping the cap first on every coolant concern seems like overkill. Most of the time, a new OEM part is going to be fine. This sounds like a rare fluke, not a common failure. I'd still start with the usual pressure test and visual inspection. Changing your whole process for a one in a thousand bad cap just isn't efficient.

Man, dry leather is the worst! @the_wyatt, I feel you, we all have those past choices that make us cringe now. Honestly, it just sucks all the life right out of the material and makes it crack. Tbh, learning how to properly condition stuff is a total game changer. It's like night and day for keeping things looking good and lasting way longer.