'83-'84 Service 6 Cycle Problems

[sknymick]

Background: My neighbors grandpa got this old Service Six in a trade for some car parts or some such. It had had some work done, in a garage it would seem, and I am trying to resurrect it for him without spending more than the value of the firearm.

It started off that pulling the trigger or the hammer would not advance the cylinder, and the cylinder would not rotate out of the frame. I got it home, on the bench, and got it all apart. It was fairly dirty, and I think the rattle can paint had gummed some stuff up. I have disassembled and reassembled it about thirty times, and have gotten it to the point that I can reliably get it to cycle 90% of the time. The other 10% the trigger will get firm, and then will lock up. I have to manually turn the cylinder to get the trigger to let loose, then we are off to the races again.

Unreliably, the trigger will lock to the rear. This can reliably be cleared by allowing the hammer to fall with full force, or sticking something behind the trigger and popping it home.

When I got it apart, the ejector looked and felt a little gooned up. Maybe somebody was trying to really force that trigger and the pawl ate it up some? I can see some wear and what almost looks like peening.

As for the cylinder rotating out, I have gotten it to reliably come out, but I have to do some tricks. When I close the cylinder it is locked in, and won't come back out without the use of some force (maybe a rap with the palm), but I can pull the trigger and then depress the release button and it comes out like butter. This works every time (60% of the time).

Cylinder rotates freely and smoothly once out of the frame, though not as nicely as a new one.

I ordered an ejector, ejector spring, transfer bar (old one seemed wonky in the trigger group) and cylinder release button from CFN. Everything worked but the ejector, as the flat side of the rod didn't align with the post holes. I'm guessing this is a type/model mismatch as the cylinders on CFN would clearly function with the ejector they sent me.

Looking for any advice to get this thing working reliably again. I think it just wants to sit in the truck with some rat shot in it, but it seems like its a tank and should fix up pretty nice.

 

[hittman]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[sknymick]

Welcome to the forum.

Thank you. I'll try not to disappoint.

 

[contender]

Welcome!

Our member here,, "RoninPa" is the one who can help. He's a DA Six series gunsmith.

And yes,, those guns are tanks and I'm sure it's worth fixing.

 

[dobegrant.45]

welcome from Arizona

 

[RoninPA]

Welcome to the forum.

Even with your description, it would be tough to do a good diagnosis of what might be going wrong, without actually having in in hand. If you would like to send it to me, I can send you a "conversation" (PM) outlining what I can do and the cost(s). As member "contender" said, the repair of the DA Six series revolvers is a speciality of mine.

And I love challenges like this.

 

[sknymick]

I appreciate the offer, but this is one I have to do myself. I'm a retired Marine, and this is going to be my life from now on. I was just looking to see if this was an easy/common "You can't use the Dilbert screen saver AND the Flying Teacups!"

I'll put a call in to CFN on Monday to see if they're up to speed on the ejector differences. Another of the Service Six's I saw on the forum had the same pattern as mine (locking posts on the flat side), so I'm guessing it's a generation thing. Maybe they'll just swap me parts.

 

[hittman]

What or who is CFN please?

 

[RoninPA]

In your case, if doing it yourself, I would suggest, strongly, that you buy Jerry Kuhnhausens The Ruger Double Action Revolvers A Shop Manual Vol. 1. It is THE BEST book written for the DA Six series revolvers and will help you immensely.

 

[PRichardson87]

What or who is CFN please?

I believe he's referring to Classic Firearms & Parts LLC

 

[stonebuster]

Do you see signs of binding on the recoil shield or cylinder? Rattle can as in it was painted? Pictures would help but as Ron said without seeing it in person, it's a guessing game. Welcome & good luck.

 

[sknymick]

In your case, if doing it yourself, I would suggest, strongly, that you buy Jerry Kuhnhausens The Ruger Double Action Revolvers A Shop Manual Vol. 1. It is THE BEST book written for the DA Six series revolvers and will help you immensely.

I appreciate the reference. I'll put that in my Amazon shopping cart. $45 will have to wait until after Christmas though.

@hittman I was referring to Classic Firearms. Their URL is cfnparts .

@stonebuster Yes. It had been painted. Forest/OD Green. And the way it's coming off would indicate to me it wasn't a baked on Krylon job.

I'll get some pictures up in the next few bits.

 

[sknymick]

Three shots of the cylinder. The front doesn't look (to me) like it's dragging too much. I've noticed that (at least) two models of this cylinder exist. This one has the flat side of the ejector aligning with the alignment rods on the cylinder (and seems to come with the "S" proof mark, picture 2). The other type, that I got from Classic Firearms, has the alignment rods 1 tine over.

Pawl looks ok to me, though I'm not the right one to judge.

 

[sknymick]

When it arrived, it also had some Vaquero wooden grips on it. Pretty much a mess, all in all.

 

[RoninPA]

Vaquero gripps???? How were they inletted to fit the frame??

My personal opinion, I would remove all the paint on the gun and start over. I would take it completely apart and evaluate each and every part (including the front sight, all the trigger and hammer parts, everything). If metal is good, maybe reblue, if not then Cerakote (a ceramic based, baked on coating that adds very little dimension). Here are a few that I refurbished and they were basket cases, badly rusted/pitted and the internals were in pretty bad shape also. Just a note: Ruger WILL NOT service these firearms, to include rebluing, because of how long they have been out of production.

The owner of this one (and the next picture) wanted the hammer and trigger jeweled)

This one cost me less than $100 because of the condition. So I decided to do somehing a bit different with the color scheme.

You can make the DA Six series guns look really good or really different if you want to, especially id they are really in bad shape.

 

[sknymick]

Vaquerro grips may have been mildly hyperbolic. I think they're SP101 grips, or something of a similar size.

This guy is a 70+ year old cowboy, still working his own cattle. I don't think he wants to go into it for Cerakote (tm) money. I mean, I'm not set up to do them, so it's not something I could donate to him. I like the idea of reblueing though. All I've got on hand is some Casey's cold blue and some plum blue from somebody else. I'll see what he thinks.

Also, I'm pretty sure he just wants this to sit in his truck for snakes and coyotes. He opted for a RIA 1911 in 9mm to replace his little Sig P380.

The guy that did this one may have been inspired by your work, because this one looks like yours, but if it was your drunk/blind cousin from Scranton that did it.

 

[stonebuster]

If the frame looked as good as the cylinder I'm surprised he painted it. Looks like round butt grips on square butt. The backwards front sight is a nice touch.

 

[RoninPA]

As for the orientation of the locator pins in the cylinder and the holes in the ejector stem star: I checked 12 cylinders that I have in my parts box and setting the flat part of the ejector stem and cylinder at 12:00, I had locator pins at 10/4 (6), 8/2 (4) and 12/6 (2). And looking at 3 ejector stems the pins on 2 were 8/2 and the other was 10/4.

I do not know (have to do some research unless someone out there knows) how the ejector stem and the ejector star were machined (or mated together), or how they determined where to drill the holes for the locator pins (they are removable/replaceable). I suspect that the cylinder and the star were orientated to the 12/6 position so the holes were drilled in the same place each time. This is easy to do on a machine.

I also found that the proof mark on the cylinder has no relationship to where the locator pins holes are drilled. Also, I don't know how they determined the position to mill the flat part of the ejector stem and the flat part of the ejector stem hole in the cylinder. It is obvious that they did not set up a fixture to orientate the same way each time.