I"M BACKArroyoshark wrote: I have followed a lot of comments and the gun smithing work on the Rio Grande by Tuco Ramerez as well as Centaur. Centaur has not posted here for over a year, so I do not know the final outcome of his work.
After a lot of frustration I put my Rio Grande in the safe, where it sat for the last couple of years while I completed another project.
Looking Back I should've included a warning to keep an eye on the space between the hammer and firing pin with the safety engaged. In my defense, even though I removed material from the hammer, the cross bolt safety still prevents the hammer from coming anywhere near the firing pin. When the hammer is compared with a 336 hammer, the Rossi has more metal where it meets the cross bolt safety. This extra material prevents the hammer from driving the firing pin all the way forward when the safety is off.Arroyoshark wrote: Third, Hammer drop:
What was disturbing, back out at the range, was that I did continue to experience the hammer stopping several times at near the half cock position, causing a failure to fire.
I reviewed the modifications done by Centaur in this thread.
For reference,
http://www.rossi-rifleman.com/viewtopic ... 6&start=40
I would like to raise a red flag to the modifications he made to the hammer.
If you remove the cross bolt safety from the frame and peer into the hole for the safety, then operate the hammer, you will find that the part of the hammer that Centaur whittled away does not actually touch the receiver frame. That is the part that engages the interference portion of the cross-bolt safety. If you whittle much material from the hammer, it will compromise the hammer blocking safety. Just a heads up here ! I would not do this. I think Centaur was close to the problem, but he was going after the wrong part as I discovered.
After a couple of years of messing around with this rifle, I never was able to make it fire reliably. Every time I made a change it would get better, but it always failed to fire a few times whenever I took it to the range.Arroyoshark wrote: Fourth, Cross-Bolt Safety:
This little part turned out to be a smoking gun !
Out at the range, I noticed that when the hammer was captured at the half cock position, when the trigger was pulled, it was due to some very minor interference with the safety. Seems the safety moved back and forth on my Rio Grande way too easily. The recoil, plus cycling the lever often caused the safety to move to right a slight amount, enough to block the hammer. If I pushed the safety to left before each shot, the round would go off - not a solution in my mind.
To test this I removed the stock in order to remove the tension screw, spring and ball detent for the safety, so I could remove the safety to the right. The first thing I noticed was that the tension screw was backed out a fair amount. This apparently significantly reduced the tension on the ball detent allowing some free movement of the cross bolt safety. I also discovered that tightening the tension screw down tight, resulted in making the cross bolt safety impossible to push back and forth. It was locked in place.
I completely removed the tension screw and ball detent, and the safety. Once more I tried some rounds. What I discovered was no hammer drop failures, no rounds that did not go off. In reviewing the symptoms that several other RG owners experienced, the failure of the hammer to fully drop when trigger pulled, and the fact it fell to nearly half cock position, supports in my mind, that either the cross-bolt safety is not manufactured to correct tolerances, and/or the tension screw backs out under extended firings, resulting in not enough pressure in the ball detent to hold the safety in the fire position.
If you experience hammer falling problems when pulling the trigger, check for interference with the cross bolt safety. Pull the butt stock off and examine whether the tension screw has backed out too far.
Thanks to this thread I decided to take another look at my RG. The first thing I did was inspect the cross bolt safety. Not only was it loose, but it was able to rotate. Every time it rotated, the cutout that allows clearance for the hammer would block the hammer from striking the firing pin. I removed the stock and the detent screw was loose. After cleaning all the parts, I reassembled the safety and now it's working properly. Hopefully it'll fire every time when I take it to the range later this week.
The saga continues.