Rossi Rifleman

Before you tear into your rifle are you certain you have all the packing/shipping grease out of it. I did the usual with mine ran nearly a whole large can of non-chlorinated brake cleaner through until it ran clear. Rifle was fine for a couple hundred rounds of mixed 357 and 38 special, then it started to hiccup on 38s. I found a chunk (rock) of dried grease messing with cartridge stop. Since then it's been fine. I can mix load it without problems, but since I bought it to hunt with it gets mostly 357s.

Make smoke,

Ohio3Wheels wrote:Before you tear into your rifle are you certain you have all the packing/shipping grease out of it. I did the usual with mine ran nearly a whole large can of non-chlorinated brake cleaner through until it ran clear. Rifle was fine for a couple hundred rounds of mixed 357 and 38 special, then it started to hiccup on 38s. I found a chunk (rock) of dried grease messing with cartridge stop. Since then it's been fine. I can mix load it without problems, but since I bought it to hunt with it gets mostly 357s.

Make smoke,

That is a good point. I did clean it before I used it. I might have miss something though, so I will poke around some more before I do anything else. I did look into the breach and I can clearly see that where the stop pivots, the bevels are in full contact. It does look like it needs more clearance to allow the stop to swing over farther. What do you think?

Possible I wasn't sure what it was supposed to look like I just knew it didn't look right. I have a bunch of polymer picks and I was using one to move the stop when I noticed the "grease rock". Fortunately the pick managed to dig it out. Funny thing it didn't look like it changed that much but the results say it was enough.

My original Rossi is a 45 Colt 20" octagonal barrel that I gave a quick clean out with power blaster and went and shot. No one told it that lever guns aren't supposed to feed SWC loads and I was somewhat ignorant about lever guns as I had only dealt with my 35 Rem 336 that fed everything I stuffed in it and I was totally unaware that Rossis had a rep of being difficult. Since then the family has grown to the 357 and 336 that I recently had "up graded" to 38-55 and a Henry in 44 Mag. Dang lever guns are the potato chip of the gun world - can't have just one .

Make smoke,

Well, after searching and cleaning every bit of the rifle I could get to, it continued to jam on 38 SPL. I ended up finding these tear-down and reassembly videos on YouTube. I bought a 1/16" punch but I had to grind down the diameter just a little so it would not get stuck in the cartridge guide pin hole.

If you want some tips on disassembling the rifle I found these YouTube videos to be useful.







take down/reassembly


also, Rossi M92, strip and reassembly ,PART ONE.


The cartridge guide had to be filed just like rondog did with his. Now it cycles 38 and 357 with ease. Along the way I did find some debris behind the cartridge guide. Here is a photo of three metal shavings I removed from behind the left cartridge guide area. That is a 1/4" screwdriver and a 1/8" punch in the photo with the 3 scraps I removed with a cotton swab.


While there are spring kits and such available to buy, I wish all the other parts were available for these rifles... things like the cartridge guide and other parts associated with it. I'm not real enamored with making modifications to make it functional, when the parts cannot be replaced. One lost pin or any other oops, and I have a fireplace ornament instead of a working rifle. Thanks to everyone here for helping me out of a "jam".