.45 Colt S&W Mountain Gun troubles

R

riddleofsteel

New member
I guess all you guys remember when I first bought my .45 Colt S&W Mountain Gun. After around 50 rounds the action locked up. Well I can't say I really minded sitting around for hours doing the polishing internals that some person at S&W probably got paid to do. However, this time I am a little put out.

First let me say I have spent more time swapping grips and taking pics that shooting this revolver. Not by choice but that is the way the "Honey-do" list has been lately.
However, I had a couple of days off to do some loading and a lot of shooting.

Lo and behold one of my chambers is slightly egg shaped at the rear. Combine that with the fact the rear of all the chambers are razor sharp and that makes for difficult or impossible extraction from this chamber without jerking the empty out with the fingers. Of course that ties up the revolver and eliminates the smooth extraction with the extractor rod and star.

AAAGGGGHHHHHH

Currently my stainless and stag lovely is sitting in a gunsmith's safe. Sometime within the next few weeks he will polish the chambers and chamfer the rear edges for easy loading as well as extraction. This should solve the problem. Now I know this is a process that really benefits any revolver. But I am really getting sick and tired of buying weapons that are almost certain to malfunction out of the box. Had I trusted my life to this revolver, untested or modified, I would probably would be the lumps in some big bear's crap pile or on a morgue slab, loser in a gun fight.
stagmg4.JPG


It will be right before it's over but dern it's getting to a pricey kit.
 
Extraction problems are not uncommon with DA revolvers in .45 Colt. The rim on this cartridge is very narrow. Much more so than on other popular revolver rounds. Was developed for the SAA with its one at a time positive extraction and the six at a time system with the DA does not work well on this narrow rim.
 
Lo and behold one of my chambers is slightly egg shaped at the rear.
Click to expand...
That would be of MAJOR concern to me. I have had a two piece stainless cylinder recently and it isn't pretty.

Sam
 
Send the gun back to Smith

That egg shaped cylnder will let a case rupture sometime. save your money S&W will do the work under warrenty.
 
Riddle:

When I got my Mount. Gun a year ago, I too noticed for the lack of a better word a "sharp" cylinder face...:(
Should this condition exist on a brand new $600.00 Revolver??

Absolutely not!!!!
But... Being I was not in the mood to deal with S&W's answer "send it to us":mad: I took it upon myself to try a "soft" fix before I went to the trouble to send it to Maine.
Here is what I did, I got this Idea from : www.beartoothbullets.com
[ they crashed about a week ago, but when it's back up it's a great informative sight[shooters forum]
Take a once fired case and drill out the primer pocket...mount it on a bolt securely and put it in a 1/4" drill. Cover the entire case in FLITZ polish[blue paste works best] insert the case int each cylinder and run the drill. Don't push, just let it run..After about 4-5 times of doing this to each cylinder, the sticking and binding STOPPED!!!!
:D
Now that won't solve the egg shaped cylinder, but it might solve the sticking cases and binding.
Good luck, and I'll be watching to see how you make out!
Chris~
 
The characteristics of this chamber more seemed to indicate a failure to completely round the rear rim of the chamber than a chamber failure.
We measured the cylinder on the outside at points 180 degrees opposite front and back and found it to completely round within specs. One of the chamber holes, however, does not seem to be as round at the rear as it is at the front of the cylinder. Part of this is due to poor/incomplete machining at the margin between the ejector star and the chamber wall. At the rear of the cylinder there is a recess where the ejector star fits into the cylinder. This is the point where the fired case is dragging on extraction.
I am hoping that camphering the rear rims of the chambers and polishing the chambers should solve the problem. But I will call the smith tomorrow and have him do a through check of the cylinder for potential failure.
 
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I could forsee this happening when I first heard of the resurgence 45 Colt DA revos.

The 45 Colt has a narrow rim cause the SAA cylinder was too small in diameter to have a conventional sized rim. That's why the DAs were usually built in 45 ACP with half moon clips. 45 Colt is pretty much a SA cartridge.

Pays to do your research before plunkin down your dinero. :(

44 Magnum is a better cartridge for a large frame DA revo. You can always load it down to 45 Colt ballistics. :)
 
OK all this talk of broken cylinders got my hair standing on end!!!!

Not having the gun here, I went and pulled the box that contained the fired cases from today's range session. After careful measurements of the cases for oversize and out of round I must retract my call of an egg shaped chamber. All of the fired cases seem to be round and within the specs I have come to expect from fired .45 Colt cases. The problem must be in the aspects I outlined in the last post of the extractor star/cylinder margins and the razor sharp chamber edges.

I to am in no mood to UPS Red label ($35.00+) a handgun to the same folks that spit it out the first time. Plus I doubt they will pour over it with the same attention to detail that my smith will or champher the cylinder for ease of reloading and extracting.

m14nut

Sounds as if we were sharing the same malfunction. Your fix sounds easy and cheap. I hope my MG is set straight as well.
 
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