The Culprit
Twice, I have had to send my camera back to Nikon for repair. Both times I rotated my 105mm beyond where I was supposed to and bent the aperture lever. Sure, I should have been more careful but I thought there must have been some design flaw to make this such an easy error to make.
So I did a little research and found others that had the same issue. Most people mentioning this problem on various forums received responses blaming them for being careless or telling them they didn't know how to mount a lens. Then, there was one person who mentioned a stop screw on the lens that might be missing.
I looked at all my lenses and there it was....a little threaded hole on my 105mm. All I needed to do was find this tiny (maybe 1mm) screw and all would be better.
I contacted Nikon USA. They would not sell me the screw. I would need to send in the lens so that they could repair it. Then, when they found out it was a gray market lens, they would touch it. I had read in several forums that Nikon Canada was more helpful than their US counterpart. Indeed they were! They told me the SKU# and told me it would be $15.00 plus taxes and shipping. Much cheaper than another $250 camera repair or shipping my lens to be fixed. I gave them my address..... They were not allowed to ship outside of Canada.
Okay...fine. I now had the SKU#. After a few days searching the net, I finally found ONE place that had these in stock in Colorado. The price? $0.32 plus $12 shipping, so I bought two.
If you have not been able to remove your lens from your DSLR and damaged the camera as a result, this may be the culprit, a tiny screw.