1860 Army

[brotherg]

This gun belongs to my Mother In Law. Serial 130xxx so 1863 or so. It has several issues.

It is loose, either a badly worn or homemade wedge.

It has a strange to me shim between the frame and the arbor.

This seems to index the arbor slot properly in both directions for the wedge to fit. With the shim removed the wedge slot over rotates or is too close to the frame and is so badly aligned a wedge will not fit.
The pin holding the arbor in place has either been drilled or broken, was not replaced.

There is some pitting between cylinders, small but visible.

The bolt spring is broken so it does not lock up. I replaced both the wedge and the spring with Uberti parts and it functions very nice.

My question is: Is there a better way to fix the Arbor? That shim looks like it will cause other issues.
Is the cylinder ruined? The pits do not look like they will allow gasses to cross cylinders but it concerns me.

My goal is to make it a shooter.
If that is not possible, then a very nice wall hanger.

Pics are being difficult, if you can not see them, right click and open in a new window.

 

[Hawg]

The chamber mouths are pretty battered and will need to be trued back up before you load it or you're going to have problems.

You didn't post a pic of the end of the arbor or the wedge slot. Are you saying the arbor turns in the frame? The arbor should bottom out in the arbor hole and be a solid fit.

 

[brotherg]

Here is the slot and the end of the arbor.
Yes the arbor turns, the pin holding it in place is gone.
It will bottom out against the shim, without the shim it goes too far and the slot will not line up with the barrel.

It seems to me I could remove the shim, re-drill and reinstall a pin to bottom out the arbor.

 

[Hawg]

You do need to pin the arbor where it can't turn. Shimming the arbor so that it bottoms out in the hole is a common practice with modern Uberti repros which always have short arbors. I wouldn't do any drilling or tapping to the original arbor to make a permanent fix in that dept. The chambers will definitely have to be worked on tho. It is pretty rough and won't bring top dollar so it's not like you're destroying a priceless antique but I would still try to keep it as original as I could.