Just to follow up on a previous thread, there was chatter about aluminum trigger guards now being made, so I thought I would share a little info on them, and the most common complaint about the originals, which is thier cracking.
This is the most common issue, the plastic gets increasingly brittle with age, and the areas around the forward action screw in particular begin to crack. Given time they will entirely shatter once this starts happening.
You can glue these up using super glue, and a little 2k sandpaper will smooth it all out
The downside is over torquing of these screws can just keep the cracks reoccuring. You can try bedding compounds etc, but if the trigger guard is 30-50 years old, once a crack appears, its usually just as easy to buy a new one.
Steyr still provides these, you can buy newly made ones for around 125$ CDN, and a site sponsor (Nordic) carries them. They will be a direct easy swap.
There are of course trigger variations on the SSG 69, and a small plastic insert is used for either the 1 or 2 trigger versions. It is something that just snaps out, and is transferrable. You can run without them, but they help keep dirt out of the trigger mechanism.
The bottom metal is a prime example of a stubborn engineers attempt to make a simple solution complicated, and ultimately in its day making such a complicated piece out of plastic was just logical.
This is where folks on the internet and after market world have stepped in to fill the void. Styria Arms (also available through Nordic) makes what is probably the best solution, a trigger guard of steel, that accepts AI mags. Its not cheap at nearly 600$ but means you can dump not only the trigger guard, but the SSG 69 magazines as well, and use cheaper AI style mags.
The other option now is two sources for aluminum trigger guards, one from a German company, and these from a British source, available on line.
These come in single and double trigger variations, but have no dust shield ability for the double trigger guns. They are made as a direct fit for the synthetic stock guns, seem to be working quite well, and come in cheaper than the Styria at around 350$ cdn a piece.
I bought two, but have noticed that on wood stocked rifles there will likely be some minor fitting required. With 40 year old wooden stocks the fitting was to tight for me to want to force them, so until I buy a dremel they will have to wait.
Overall the quality is very good, mags pop in and out easily, they fit the action well, and if it wasnt for my wood stocks, I would have already put them in. You can find these on line by googling around, or reaching out to Dr.Strangelove_207 over on snipershide, who has these made up in batches. They are vapour honed and anodised, giving a nice finish.
One final mention is that Picatinny rails for these rifles are a pretty cheap option these days, compared to the factory rings. I wanted the option of using 1in and 30mm scopes on my rifles, without paying out nearly 700$ on two sets of rings, when I was sitting on a pile of rings already. The Steyr pic adapter comes in a little over 200$ and for regular SSG 69s its an easy instal, and seems quite solid. There are one or two other brands out there, some even cheaper if you look around. My Match does not have a grooved receiver, which meant having to have a pic rail made up by a gun builder in Edmonton. For 125$ a custom made rail seemed a no brainer, which gave the option of installing any rings I wanted to use.
This is the most common issue, the plastic gets increasingly brittle with age, and the areas around the forward action screw in particular begin to crack. Given time they will entirely shatter once this starts happening.
You can glue these up using super glue, and a little 2k sandpaper will smooth it all out
The downside is over torquing of these screws can just keep the cracks reoccuring. You can try bedding compounds etc, but if the trigger guard is 30-50 years old, once a crack appears, its usually just as easy to buy a new one.
Steyr still provides these, you can buy newly made ones for around 125$ CDN, and a site sponsor (Nordic) carries them. They will be a direct easy swap.
There are of course trigger variations on the SSG 69, and a small plastic insert is used for either the 1 or 2 trigger versions. It is something that just snaps out, and is transferrable. You can run without them, but they help keep dirt out of the trigger mechanism.
The bottom metal is a prime example of a stubborn engineers attempt to make a simple solution complicated, and ultimately in its day making such a complicated piece out of plastic was just logical.
This is where folks on the internet and after market world have stepped in to fill the void. Styria Arms (also available through Nordic) makes what is probably the best solution, a trigger guard of steel, that accepts AI mags. Its not cheap at nearly 600$ but means you can dump not only the trigger guard, but the SSG 69 magazines as well, and use cheaper AI style mags.
The other option now is two sources for aluminum trigger guards, one from a German company, and these from a British source, available on line.
These come in single and double trigger variations, but have no dust shield ability for the double trigger guns. They are made as a direct fit for the synthetic stock guns, seem to be working quite well, and come in cheaper than the Styria at around 350$ cdn a piece.
I bought two, but have noticed that on wood stocked rifles there will likely be some minor fitting required. With 40 year old wooden stocks the fitting was to tight for me to want to force them, so until I buy a dremel they will have to wait.
Overall the quality is very good, mags pop in and out easily, they fit the action well, and if it wasnt for my wood stocks, I would have already put them in. You can find these on line by googling around, or reaching out to Dr.Strangelove_207 over on snipershide, who has these made up in batches. They are vapour honed and anodised, giving a nice finish.
One final mention is that Picatinny rails for these rifles are a pretty cheap option these days, compared to the factory rings. I wanted the option of using 1in and 30mm scopes on my rifles, without paying out nearly 700$ on two sets of rings, when I was sitting on a pile of rings already. The Steyr pic adapter comes in a little over 200$ and for regular SSG 69s its an easy instal, and seems quite solid. There are one or two other brands out there, some even cheaper if you look around. My Match does not have a grooved receiver, which meant having to have a pic rail made up by a gun builder in Edmonton. For 125$ a custom made rail seemed a no brainer, which gave the option of installing any rings I wanted to use.
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