1872 Open Top and 1851 Conversion barrell exchange

[Nevada Smith]

Hi guys

I own a 1872 Open Top in 38 special with a 5.5 " barrell, and a 1851 conversion (Man with no name conversion) in 38 special with a 7.5 " barrell.
Both are Uberti made guns

Does somebody know if it's possible to adapt the 5.5" barrell on the 1851 conversion ?
Both frames semm to be identical.

Thanks for your help

Cheers.
Nevada.

 

[BCRider]

Well, first step is to try fitting them. If the barrel slips in place and the lower frame pins align well enough to let the barrel slide home that's step 1.

Next would be to check the wedges and see if one of them provides a proper lockup of the fit without trying to flex the cylinder arbor too strongly.

And finally you want to check the cylinder gap when the wedge is locked in place to see if it's down around the thickness of a piece of printer paper. Remember to pull back the cylinder to check this as the hand pushed it forward.

If it passes each of these in turn then the next thing is to run a close fitting range rod down the bore and check that at full #### the chambers line up well with the barrel bore. The forcing cone can make up for some SLIGHT amount of misalignment. But if it's enough to feel consistently then it's too much. Another way that some use but which never seemed to work for me is to shine a flashlight at the cylinder gap and check the internal image for a nicely concentric looking image.

 

[Nevada Smith]

Thanks a lot BCRider

 

[Lee Enfield]

Hi guys

I own a 1872 Open Top in 38 special with a 5.5 " barrell, and a 1851 conversion (Man with no name conversion) in 38 special with a 7.5 " barrell.
Both are Uberti made guns

Does somebody know if it's possible to adapt the 5.5" barrell on the 1851 conversion ?
Both frames semm to be identical.

Thanks for your help

Cheers.
Nevada.

both of your guns were actually manufactured by Uberti as cartridge guns.

I understand that Uberti used larger arbour pins on the cartridge open tops.

I would follow BCR's advice.