What barrel was this?

[Grizzlypeg]

Is the only thing holding the upper to the lower, the rear pin that you move to the right? I pushed it off to the side, and was able to pull the butt stock and short section of lower receiver away from the upper, but couldn't get the rest of the lower to slide rearward. Either its tight on the rails, or something else is holding them together.

[stencollector]

Likely there is some slag from the cuts. You may have to tap the trigger guard with a plastic hammer to remove the lower. Since your lower is cut in half, you can go forwards or backwards, just make sure your barrel nut is turned upwards if you are going to slide the mk1 lower backwards or it will catch.

[Grizzlypeg]

In the above picture, what are the two round lugs on the bottom of the lower receiver front for? What did the lever do?

[tankhunter]

Those lugs & the lever you refer to. Are the front mounting point for fitting to a sustained fire Tripod. The rear would have been underneath the wooden Butt & afixed to a mechanical device known as 'The Traversing & Elevating Mechanisem'.

[Peter Laidler]

Grizzlypig, might I suggest that before you embark any further on your project, that you get a super little reference book about the Bren. It's the Ian Skennerton SAIS series, titled THE BREN GUN, available from any of the good dealers (try BDL in SC to start with). It is full of the bits of info you need and would answer pretty well all of the questions

[Brit plumber]

Also, if you end up being a Bren collector, there is a book on the Horizon that will be the bible to end all bibles!

Your Mk2 body must be quite rare in the USA (I never thought, I'm just assuming your in the USA) as it only has 1 cut.

p.s. I've sent you another PM

[Grizzlypeg]

The top of the barrel is marked 42
Elsewhere on the barrel:

N8260S
93219
D1475

also the arrow marking that might be British or Canuck? Also a sort of coat of arms looking stamp.

How hard is it to drive the pin out that holds the flash suppressor in place?

[Brit plumber]

Its a Canadian Inglis barrel from early 1942. It was originally the spare barrel to Inglis Mk1m serial number N8260 and then possibly fitted to Enfield gun D1475. There is a thread by Peter L on the forum that explains how to remove the stainless portion. I'll try and find it.

ATB, Chris.

found it, The Mk1 and Mk1* Bren Barrel (by Peter Laidler)

And this is the reference you will be looking for thanks to Peter Laidler

"I mention the engineering geometry of the unscrewable sleeve but there’s more. If you chance to have a spare barrel and want to try, just press out the morse taper pin from left to right. Hold the barrel end and you’ll be able to tap off the sleeve with a rawhide mallet against the gas nozzle as simple as that. That’s not my idea of an interference fit. In fact, in REME technical language, that’s what we’d call ‘…a stonking good fit..’. And furthermore, it’s only tightish over the length of the gas block to boot. The remaining 6 ½” or so are a sliding fit. It was only this 1” gas block length that was to be threaded."

[Peter Laidler]

I should add that in the production guns, the gas sleeve wasn't threaded, just that stonking good fit again

[stencollector]

I like to warm up the sleeve with a propane torch before trying to remove it. I generally find the Inglis flashiders to be "super stonkin" good fit.