New Ruger Old Army Hammer / Cylinder Locks Up!

[whitfang]

Got my Ruger Old Army in the mail today.  Nice gun!   :grin:  :grin:  :grin:

I'm getting the stuff to fire it and in the meantime I've been cycling it repeatedly.  And it seems that if you don't pull the hammer exactly right, sometimes the whole action freezes.  Disassembly will free it,  but that's a pain in the butt.

The culprit is the little nub that comes up from the frame to rotate the cylinder.  When disassemlbing I have to remove the loading lever, move the cylinder a little to the left, the use a screwdriver to push the nub down, which frees the action.

Is this normal, or do I have a defective gun?    :cry:   :cry:   :cry:

[HWooldridge]

The part that rotates the cylinder is the "hand" and it is not right that a new gun should do this.  If you are mechanically minded and want to mess with it, you may be able to figure it out but I would return it immediately and get one that functions correctly.  I am a shadetree pistolsmith and do a lot of gun fixes but a new one should work out of the box.

[John Traveler]

Whitfang,

What you described is NOT normal.  The ROA should not need a push to free the cylinder pawl or ratchet for disassembly.

I would disassemble the gun and check dirt or foreign matter that is preventing the pawl from moving freely.  If nothing is broken, and there are no burrs preventing movement, cleaning and reassembly should be enough to restore full function.  If you can't disassemble the piece, or are not comfortable with doing it, squirt some solvent or penetrating oil into the mechanism and work it repeatedly to free the obstructioh.

Let us know how it works out.

[whitfang]

Sent it back for exchange.

This only happened when I'd thumb the hammer back, then try to put it on half-cock.

Thanks for your advice.

We'll see how the next one works.

[Pogue]

My Old Army is over 25 years old, and I have had this happen occasionally, though I've never been able to pin it to a specific series of actions.  Since it happens so rarely, and it's easy to correct, I've just lived with it.  But after reading the responses, maybe I'll have my favorite gunsmith check it out!

[howdy doody]

One of the pair of my first Old Armys did the same thing. Not often though. I would say it would jam once in 25 complete cycles. I inspected the hand and also the indexing holes. Since I had a pair it was easy to see that the hand was messed up a bit on the end and I just took a fine file and shaped it a bit. Plenty of lube in my hand slots and down into the hammer sear too makes mine run fine. I since added a pair of 5 1/2 ROAs and they have never missed a beat, but I had one of them that I actually had to shim the hammer on because it was hitting the side of the slot. I am guessing that about half of the Old Army revolvers need a tad of fine tuning and the other half are fine right out of the box. Well, that is my experience anyway.
On the bright side, they took far less work to be reliable and all than my repro 58 Remmies. I love to tinker anyway, but when you spend $400 on a C&B it ought to work right when you take delivery. I am glad you sent yours back and I should have too, because maybe that will wake Ruger up to sloppy quality control.