Hello, I am a new ruger bisley/blackhawk owner. I put a Belt Mountain base pin in and I am very impressed with the quality and the amount of slop that was eliminated. I found that eliminating this slop caused a problem. About every 3rd time I pull back the hammer, the cylinder refuses to rotate, and takes some wiggling to work, I believe that the cylinder latch is preventing this movement. Has anyone else experienced this and what was the proper fix? I am sure that this is the fault of the gun and not of the base pin. Thanks
Ian

Ian,

First, does the cylinder spin freely on the pin outside the frame? With the loading gate open, will the cylinder rotate freely? Is the cylinder hitting the barrel?

Cock the hammer slowly and watch what happens. The cylinder bolt should move down and clear the cylinder notch just before the cylinder starts to spin. At the same time, look at the barrel/cylinder gap and make sure it hasn't closed. With a marker, place a mark on the cylinder to identify it's place when the problem you described occurs. This will allow you to see if the problem is occuring in the same exact place every time. Check this out and let us know what you find before proceeding further.

Malm

Ian,

P.S. If the gun worked properly before you replaced the base pin and now it doesn't, logic would dictate that it is probably the base pin that is at fault and not the gun. Perhaps the gun and the base pin are like me and my ex, nothing wrong with either of us, there just wasn't enough "slack" to make things work smoothly...

Malm

Hello, thanks for the reply. yes the cylinder spins freely on the new base pin. and after a bit of breaking in, it only catches on one notch about every other rotation. The cylinder gap does not close during this malfunction. I would really like to fix this without relying on the original base pins slop. thanks again
Ian

Ian,

One area I neglected to have you check is the movement of the transfer safety bar. The original base pin should have a protrusion at the rear end that would move the transfer safety bar out and away from the frame to keep it from running into the bottom of the firing pin.

I don't know if your new pin has that provision or not since I obviously cant see it, so, when the gun malfunctions, immediately look ahead of the hammer nose at the transfer bar and see if it is hitting the bottom of the firing pin.

Malm

Malm, the safety bar is not hitting the firing pin. I noticed that little plunger before and didnt know what it did. Thanks for the help
Ian

If its the bolt (locking latch) that's interferring with the locking notch in the cylinder it means the gun is out of time. When it goes out of time by replacing the base pin it means the cylinder is not straight in the receiver.....or the bolt notch in the floor of the receiver is not straight....or the locking notch on the cylinder is not straight. All of these things are surprisingly common in Ruger revolvers. That's why custom Rugers cost a LOT of money. They have to be remade starting with one dimension, (barrel threads, Base pin holes, breech face, *something*) Most of the time all the dimensions are out of whack a little bit and can be straightened by remachining and then making new parts to fit. Hamilton Bowen is the wizard on these. He says he returns eleven out of twelve Rugers because they're too crooked to make perfect.

I made a 41 out of a 357 and was amazed at what all had to be done to get all the parts facing the right direction. Even the chambers weren't indexed at a true 60 degrees to each other. The error was up to .007 inch out.

It's a fact of life. The older guns were cast larger and more machining was done to finish them. They tend to be much better made and closer to being right.