MK II dissassembly question

[rh44mag]

I have a MK 2 this is about 25 years old I have owned it over 15 years. It hasn't had more than a brick of shells thru it. I have always had a issue with dissassembly. I have only had it apart once. The problem is in the main spring housing. The spring tab will pop out to release the housing but the housing only moves a little bit then stops. What appears to be happening is the roll pin, #5 in the diagram, has backed out and is catching on the frame. Has anybody ever encountered this? Is there a way to get is apart without damaging anything?

 

[rugerguy]

couple of tricks we have use over the years when the pin or rivets, "move" over,is get some 'Kroil' in and around the pins, let it soak in real good, sometimes we could tap the guns frame on the side OPPOSITE the direction the pin went out, and it may move, OR get some old feeler gauges, you don;t care about screwing up a shim or two, and try and slide it in and over the pin, and get it to move back in place, shim over the pin and pull (tug) at the housing to come out at the same time,,,,this does take two sets of hands and fingers ha ha......good luck, take your time and have patience....................
bottom line is if the pin shifted over ,in time, ,once it is soaked , it should slide back over and into place.......once you get it out, make sure you 're-stake' it , in place, on BOTH sides....

 

[SGW Gunsmith]

I have a MK 2 this is about 25 years old I have owned it over 15 years. It hasn't had more than a brick of shells thru it. I have always had a issue with dissassembly. I have only had it apart once. The problem is in the main spring housing. The spring tab will pop out to release the housing but the housing only moves a little bit then stops. What appears to be happening is the roll pin, #5 in the diagram, has backed out and is catching on the frame. Has anybody ever encountered this? Is there a way to get is apart without damaging anything?

Depends on how far over the bolt stop pin, pivot pin has drifted. I've only had this situation happen twice in the 44 years I've been involved with gun repair. On one occasion I could see the end of the pin and that allowed me to get a shim between the grip frame and the mainspring housing and push the pin to the right until I could free the mainspring housing and pull it out. The other situation involved a much worse scenario. The left end of the bolt stop pin drifted over and past the slight shoulder in the grip frame, not offering the left end to push either right, or left. I then took a hack-saw blade and ground it as thin as I could get it, dunking the blade in water to keep its temper regularly. Of course, the tooth-set was removed and the blade was pretty thin, but I was able to get the blade through the tiny gap between the mainspring housing and the grip frame to saw the bolt stop pivot pin almost through, until the thin metal that was left broke the pin in two. That exercise took quite a while to get done for a 1/8-inch diameter pin. After that fiasco, whenever I have a Ruger Mark pistol on my bench and it gets taken apart, the mainspring housing bolt latch and bolt stop pin, pivot pins get staked on the very edge of each side of each pin three times, 120-degrees apart. Punching a dimple in the center of those pins, as done at Ruger, is just not sufficient enough to prevent those pins from drifting, and it seems they always go to the left. When I dimple the edges of those pins, it rolls metal over and into the gap between the pin and housing, in three places, 120-degrees apart, or as close to that as you can get, it always seems to keep those pins from drifting. I've never seen a "rivet" that helps hold the weld-laminated mainspring housing together, drift out, though.

 

[rh44mag]

Thanks guys I'll keep you posted on how it turns out

 

[Bullseye57]

That pin should not be a roll pin. Once you drift it back in place, take out the housing and re-stake a heavy dimple, with a pointed punch, in both sides of the top of the pivot pin to prevent it from walking again. Like you see on these pins in this photo-

R,
Bullseye

 

[SGW Gunsmith]

All the mainspring housing bolt stop pivot & housing latch pins that I've seen over the years have a "wimpy" dimple done to the center of the pin. It's quite apparent that , that dimple isn't enough, in many instances to keep the pivot pins in place. I've had much better luck using a center punch to roll the metal on the edge of the pivot pin into the slight gap between the edge of the pivot pin and the edge of the mainspring housing, on both sides, using three dimples 120-degrees apart. I would recommend that the re-staking be done the next time the mainspring housing assembly is taken out of the grip frame. As for me, I'd rather over-do the staking of that pin before any movement of it gets the chance to cause grief.