L1A1 Frame-Body Lock

[Vincent]

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This one followed me home yesterday. The body locking lever was broken. Today I pulled the butt off and removed the lever. Then I found out why it was broken. The Lock is frozen and has resisted my best efforts to get it out.

The greasy residue makes me think the phosphate wasn't neutralized properly. Do any of you have tricks for freeing these?

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[Peter Laidler]

Ho, ho, ho........ that takes me back......... We had these that were jammed solid after being in the salt water mangrove swamps. Put a brass drift into the catch recess and drift it back. It WILL go

[Vincent]

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Thank you, Peter.

I wasn't hitting hard enough.

[Peter Laidler]

Seen a few zillion of them before. The REAL pig was when the screwed pin holding the lever was rusted solid too. Once the salt water got behind the wooden butts is caused chaos there as it couldn't escape

[Vincent]

How did you get them out?

[Peter Laidler]

Had to remove the return spring tube and drill it out in a specially made jig. I think it was a 5mm thread too! If the drill wandered off course, the TMH was scrapped. In the commercial world I would imagine that as it was the long shaft part of the screw that was important, if the drill veered off course you could just thread oversize.

That was really a Far East area problem really.

[Vincent]

Thank you, Peter.

The problem with this one was corrosion caused by the Parkerizing solution not being properly neutralized. The return spring tube threads had it too. They must have dipped the TMH after it was partly assembled.

I want to check the CHS and when I was looking for a set of gauges I came across a stepped rod. http://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-to...prod16674.aspx How does that work?

[Peter Laidler]

Unit headspace for the L1A1 rifle was 1.6325 go x 1.643 no go. And these were the same for the Indian rifles too as I got the spec sheet from the ILO at work. The rod you speak of sounds like it was for getting a rough estimate for a locking shoulder. Nothing more. But those are the gauge sizes, the only ones I actually remember (without cheating by looking them up and sounding clever at boring technical meetings with true clever ar5es!). I'm sure Brian at BDL will have gauges. I'd nip over there and see him. Only a couple of inches on my map here!!!!!!