I stopped by the CMPicon North Store last Friday just to see if there was anything new. They had the same old picked over Springfield and Winchester field grades and I was about to leave when I saw a row of HRA rack grades on the end rack. I thought, "Well, before I leave I'll run through them real quick." Second from the last one I see a 5.7 serial number. I have all the HRA's except a 5.7, so why not look it over. The wood is definitely rack grade with a cracked front handguard and approximately 300+ dings everywhere else. But the barrel looks to be an original 11/55 HRA and what's this, the muzzle, while a little dinged, is a solid 1.0! Let's take it up to the counter and open it up and see what's inside. I take it up to the counter and ask for permission the open the action up and what pops out, a gas trap trigger housing! SOLD! It gets even better when I get home. The lower band is Winchester, as is the trigger guard. But when I disassemble the trigger group I find an A marked Winchester trigger.

I tore the rifle completely down. While I had it down to a barreled receiver I set it up in the lathe and trued the muzzle back up to G.I. specs. The Frazier elevation drum had a pretty flat tooth so I replaced it with a NHC I had. I reassembled everything with a new op-rod spring and ran it out to the club. I had to use the 50 yard bench because there were other shooters there. Still though, the rifle repeated eight shot groups that ran 1 to 1 1/4 inches. Not bad for a rack grade!

In this picture I have already replaced the trigger group with an all correct HRA group. The op-rod was a very nice condition 65 series SA which I replaced with an HRA dot op-rod I had on the wall. I also swapped out the SA -12 bolt with a Universal Windings HRA bolt I had in the parts drawer. I still need some decent HRA wood and rear sights.



The bonus; A gas trap trigger housing. Just what I need for my 36,XXX serial number reproduction gas trap.

Information
Warning: This is a relatively older thread
This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.