204 firing pin

[reb8600]

I have a couple of questions. I have torn it apart and cleaned it so that is not the problem.  I need to know how much protrusion you have on the firing pin on the 204. I just bought one and am not happy with it at all. Out of the three times I pulled the trigger to fire it it only hit the primer hard enough to fire the first time. I called NEF and they said the protrusion should be .035. Mine is at .041 and my 223 is at .051, so I dont think the .035 is right. I am sure that is where the problem is. They say they have not heard of this problem before, I know that is a lie since I had the same problem with my 17 hmr and sent it back. They ground on the action to make the hammer go further forward so the transfer bar pushed the firing pin out further. Looks like crap. They could have ground the hammer instead, so I would rather not send it to them.

Next it does not latch without slamming it but I have found on here how to fix that.

This one extracts the shell instead of ejecting it like my 223. Should it extract or eject.

I have had the same problem with 2 out of 3 new rifles I have bought from them.
Thanks for any help you can give.

[quickdtoo]

Welcome to GBO!  Read the stickys at the top of the forum, lots of info in there. Due to the transfer bar, you need to pull the trigger completely to the rear rather than releasing it at the break. Some Handis are more critical about this than others. If it continues to not fire, I'd send it in for repair. FWIW, I have 14 frames including a .204 Ruger Handi and have never had a failure to fire and it's not the norm. Fred M had problems with his .257R custom and traced it to a weak hammer spring and a firing pin that had too much resistance to movement.

All new H&R/NEF rifles will eventually come with extractors, ejectors are a thing of the past and hopefully the stuck case issues are too. Yours extracting is normal.

[Fred M]

reb8600.
If you have .041" F.P. protrusion that should be fine. I had .036" on mine and had lots of misfires. I cleaned up the seat where the hammer hits and gained 5 thou. I now have  like you .041"

With the transfer bar up I measured the resistance of the F.P. return spring and found it to have 45oz. The F.P. seat had burrrs in the cross pin hole and restricted free F.P travel.

So I polished and cleaned out the seat and cut a coil off the spring which reduced the resistance to 22 oz. This helped but still had misfires but it toke a new hammer spring to solve the problem.

A weak hit on the primer will cause poor ignition and of course poor accuracy.

You may want to entertain a lighter trigger return spring, it helps greatly with the follow through so that silly transfer bar stays put. This also reduces the trigger pull weight a bit. A 6oz return spring weight is enough to return the triger instead of 1.5 lbs. I used a different spring with lighter wire. JP45 used a ball pen spring for this.