I rescued a Winchester 77

ssapach

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I got this thing over a year ago, it came as a package deal with another rifle (or maybe 2) that I wanted. Didn't look too pretty, didn't have a mag and didn't cycle properly.

Thought it was an interesting thing, with the left handed charging handle. Sat in the closet for about a year before I dug out out and tore it down.

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Disassembly is the easy part, but this little rifle is a bit of an interesting thing internally. Lots of small pieces, considering how simple some other semi-autos are built.

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Everything was pretty gummed up inside, so no wonder it wasn't cycling properly. Add to that a few broken pieces, such as the ejector pin, retaining ring on the end of the timing rod and the safety lever had an incorrect spring and was missing the spring retaining clip. The safety liked to flop around as it pleased while I tried to shoot the gun, as the spring wasn't strong enough to keep the safety switch engaged in the detents in the receiver.

While I had it all apart, everything (minus the trigger guard since it's plastic) got an acetone bath.....including the stock. Lots of built up crud came out of the whole thing. Was filthy, to put it bluntly, and it took a bit of scraping and brushing in the acetone to get everything cleaned up nicely.

After some cleaning, and polishing the barrel and receiver, all the metal bits were hot blued. In the meantime, I ordered a few new parts to replace broken and/or lost pieces. It's too bad I couldn't find a new trigger guard though. It seems odd that there would be so much work into the design of this rifle, and at the end of the day they just slap a plastic trigger guard on and call it good.

Anyways, here's the final result, as I finally got it assembled this afternoon:

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Now I just need to take it out and test fire it, hopefully it actually cycles properly now!
 
Unfortunately, today's test firing was a bit of a failure.

Previously, the gun would do 1 shot at a time, but wouldn't eject due to the broken ejector. Now it will at least eject. Seems to have feed issues though, and maybe 1 in 5 shots the bolt doesn't travel back far enough to #### the firing pin striker.

Perhaps my mags need some tweaking for the feed issue?

Still a work in progress I guess. Good practice rifle I suppose.
 
Nicely done, hopefully you get the feed issue sorted out. They are great rifles, I have one as well that recently started to fail to eject. Where did you source your parts?
 
Nicely done, hopefully you get the feed issue sorted out. They are great rifles, I have one as well that recently started to fail to eject. Where did you source your parts?

Numrich first, then I got a couple more pieces from Western Gun Parts.
 
Boo-Boo, you done good.
This sort of fortitude is what keeps these old gals from the scrap bin.

Keep this one alive with your turns of events.

Hard not to like the profile of this gal.
 
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