Cleaning and tweaking a 50 year old CIL 171

[hunter5425]

I have my dad's old CIL 171 ( a Remington 525 clone) that had a horrible trigger, accuracy issues and 50 years of gunk in the innards. I stripped it down, polished the trigger/ sear surfaces, and cut an inch of the barrel ( the front sight dovetail was nearly in the rifling) putting on a new crown.

First off a roll pin that actuates the safety must be removed and then a screw is removed to take off the safety lever.

Next a pin holding the trigger ,safety bar and trigger spring is removed.

This allowed removal of the safety bar and spring with the trigger falling out.

The sear block pin is then removed and the sear block slides out the back of the action

** I later made a lighter spring out of some spring wire to lower the pull more. It's not too hard just finicky. The trick is to anneal the wire first, form the spring , harden it then temper ( I place the spring on some molten lead for this.

Reassembly is essentially the reverse with the real trick being getting the safety bar spring and trigger to line up ( some cursing seemed to help.)
After cleaning and polishing the trigger is now 3 lbs with a bit of creep and over travel. A good way to spend a snowy afternoon.
Got her put back together and I will try it when it quits snowing

 

[hal1955]

I have an old CIL 171 with a horrible trigger. Any pics or advice would be appreciated. Tks.

 

[hunter5425]

I reposted the pictures that I had that somehow disappeared. I hope this helps.There seems to be no way to get rid of the creep completely .

 

[tactical lever]

CIL didn't make any rifles. No clones, they were rebadged. I believe it was a way to get around tariffs.

Pretty sure the only real fix is to re-profile the sear.

Though if you aren't careful it's pretty easy to turn a rifle into a piece of junk.