Browning Auto 5 Question

Scout Rifleman

Broken In
Rating - 100%
58   0   0
I need some tech advice. A friend of mine (REALLY !) bought a second bbl for his auto 5. The current gun is a late 50's FN manufactured model. The "new" bbl is stamped "Browning St Louis..." and has "BP" stamped on it. I am guessing it is an older version, when they were still made in the USA.
Here is the trouble, the current bbl has a channel cut in the left side of the receiver portion(Rear of the chamber) This channel splits the ejector and allows the extractor to slide through on assembly. The newly obtained barrel has only an abbreviated channel that begins forward of unsplit ejector and peters out before the chamber. The remainder of the BBL is identical dimensionally and in design.:

question is : What has he got? What does he need to list it as when he sells it so the next guy knows it is for a particular run of Auto 5's and certainly will not fit an FN model.:confused:
 
Scout Rifleman said:
I need some tech advice. A friend of mine (REALLY !) bought a second bbl for his auto 5. The current gun is a late 50's FN manufactured model. The "new" bbl is stamped "Browning St Louis..." and has "BP" stamped on it. I am guessing it is an older version, when they were still made in the USA.
Here is the trouble, the current bbl has a channel cut in the left side of the receiver portion(Rear of the chamber) This channel splits the ejector and allows the extractor to slide through on assembly. The newly obtained barrel has only an abbreviated channel that begins forward of unsplit ejector and peters out before the chamber. The remainder of the BBL is identical dimensionally and in design.:

question is : What has he got? What does he need to list it as when he sells it so the next guy knows it is for a particular run of Auto 5's and certainly will not fit an FN model.:confused:


You never said if the second bbl actually functions when attached to the action. To the best of my knowledge, the Auto 5 was never made in the states. My guess is that the secon bbl is actually a bbl for the Browning pump (bp) and will not function on the Auto 5 action.
 
Scout Rifleman said:
No, the newly obtained BBL will not go into the receiver as the single ejector will not allow the left extractor to pass.

Sounds like you got bbl for the pump and not auto 5.
 
Naw, its an Auto 5 bbl, the machining and bearing surfaces are all correct for the receiver and it is old. The BPS was japanese and manufactured in the 70's. Also the BPS ejects downward like an Ithaca and has the ejector located near the top of the receiver.
I did look in Murtz's book of exploded diagrams and now see that it lists two ejectors one as current and the other as Pre-war. The book is from the sixties so I am guessing pre WWII. So Now can someone tell me if there was a date when the design changed?
 
Scout Rifleman said:
Naw, its an Auto 5 bbl, the machining and bearing surfaces are all correct for the receiver and it is old. The BPS was japanese and manufactured in the 70's. Also the BPS ejects downward like an Ithaca and has the ejector located near the top of the receiver.
I did look in Murtz's book of exploded diagrams and now see that it lists two ejectors one as current and the other as Pre-war. The book is from the sixties so I am guessing pre WWII. So Now can someone tell me if there was a date when the design changed?


Good to know that there is different auto 5's. I was not aware that there were two different auto 5's. I had a Japanese auto 5 bbl with invectors that I put on an older Belgium auto 5 so that I could shoot steel, and it worked fine. I wish I still had the gun and extra bbl so I could read bbl markings.
 
There are differences between the Belgium Auto 5's and those made in Japan... one of them being you can't get some parts for the Belgium made ones anymore.

I suggest you phone Erv at Western Gun Parts and ask him. He bought every part available from Browning years ago.
 
Back
Top Bottom