Fixing Canon EOS 10D (probably 30d, 60d, 20d)loose flash hot shoe (flash mount) problem

The problem description:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=10150128
I recently noticed that my pocket wizard wasn't firing my lights. After playing around with it for awhile, I noticed that the hotshoe plate is loose, and when I rotate the camera for a vertical shot -90 degrees it doesn't fire, I rotate the camera +90 degrees and it fires. If I take a horizontal shot and press in the +90 direction it will fire. I don't see any screws to tighten, so curious if anybody has had a similar problem, and what did you do to fix it ?

I've used the camera for a year with a 550ex flash and haven't noticed any problems like this, but wondering if the flash units weight possible loosened up something internal to the camera.

Thanks. Randy

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=8945595
Is there a wobble in the hotshoe? This has happened to me quite often. The screws that hold the hotshoe tangs become loose, causing the flash pins to lose full contact with the hotshoe contacts (those little silver circles between the hotshoe tangs). This especially happens when shooting in vertical since the flash is on its side and that bit of play in the hotshoe is enough to pull some pins off the contacts. What you need to do is remove the thin black metal plate that covers those little screws. Look very closely at the hotshoe and you will see that there is a very thin metal plate there. Use a micro flathead screwdriver to lift the plate up (stick the micro flathead underneath the plate at the lip you see surrounding the silver contacts) and slide it off (towards the rear, not forward towards the front of the camera). Take a very close look and you'll see what I mean. Once you get that thin shield off, you'll find four tiny silver screws that are probably loose. Tighten them and replace the shield. (I leave my shield off.) 

billash wrote: 
> I've found that quite often when shooting verticals with this combo 
> I get underexposed images....often up to two stops under. 
> 
> Is this a common problem experienced by others, or does this sound 
> like a malfunction? 
> 
> I'm using a Canon 28-135 IS lens w/ hood. The problem doesn't seem 
> to correlate to the zoom focal length I'm using at the time. It 
> just happens too frequently for me to feel comfortable shooting 
> verticals for the time being. 
> 
>
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=9947224: From T3:

Those loose hotshoe screws happened fairly regularly with my 10D. I ended up removing the thin black plate altogether, and keeping a micro screwdriver set in my bag, for on-the-spot tightening. Not a big deal. But I've never removed the screws, and I've never had to remove the metal shoe and "tap it back into place". In my situation, the hotshoe screws were just a little loose and needed retightening. It's also been recommended to me that I use some thread-locking compound which will keep the screws from loosening again. 

Simon wrote: 
> Thanks to http://www.abieborker.com/tipstricks.php 
> 
> First pry/slide off the thin black metal plate over the metal hot 
> shoe of your 10D. Under it you will find four small philips head 
> screws, unscrew them, DON'T LOSE THEM. Take off the metal shoe, and 
> tap it back into shape, place it back on, put back in the screws 
> and slide back on the black metal plate. You've now saved a repair 
> bill of at least 100$ and have a perfectly good flash shoe.
So, this method helped me too back several years ago, but some notices:
Take care of plastic parts, do not hurt them with the screwdriver!
Try to lift the metal part with your nails before trying with the screwdriver, it helps you to know what you are going to know.
The small metal part "clicks" out at the camera front side, then you can "click" it out at the rear side, finally slide it off.
If You know what you are doing, you do not need to much force and tricks, just the exact point where to use the screwdriver (~ at the middle of the 'lip' or 'island'.
My biggest concern was 'which is that small metal part?'. It seems it IS the base of the hot shoe and it is attached to that, but not. Hereby I attack some pictures to You to help understanding what is it all about.








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