Project Appleseed

Rifle had run fine all Saturday, but not too far into Sunday the trigger would no longer break, regardless of safety position.  To save time, we temporarily swapped in a trigger group from a loaner. 

On a detailed inspection of the problem group, Edheler discovered that the trigger overtravel screw had backed out due to vibration and was blocking the trigger.  It's not only take-down and sight mounting screws that have to be checked... 

After a quick fix, the original group was restored and ran fine thereafter.

Credit where it is due: it was BoxesOfLiberty who noticed the over-travel screw problem. At the time I was preparing to disassemble the entire trigger group because I was concerned about a bend in the bolt release.

While not having to do with the trigger, but I've recently seen two 10/22s have issues with the bolt locking back at inopportune times.  One rifle was mine and the other was the SC's.  I'm not sure what happened to the SCs but mine was due to the polymer extended mag release that I had just put in. 

For some reason the polymer wasn't shaped correctly and was so soft that it deformed and caused the mag latch plunger (B-36) to shift and bind up the bolt lock plate (B-41).  If I wiggled the mag release it would allow the bolt lock plate to slide forward, but it would also drop the mag.  I took out the polymer extended mag release and put the original one back in.  That solved the problem.  I ordered another extended mag release from Midway, a SS one made by Ranch Products and that has my rifle working fine.  The bolt lock was actually scraped where the plunger was hitting it and I had to smooth it out.

Quote from: TN_Dadx5 on June 19, 2012, 05:04:22 PM
For some reason the polymer wasn't shaped correctly and was so soft that it deformed and caused the mag latch plunger (B-36) to shift and bind up the bolt lock plate (B-41).  If I wiggled the mag release it would allow the bolt lock plate to slide forward, but it would also drop the mag.  I took out the polymer extended mag release and put the original one back in.  That solved the problem.  I ordered another extended mag release from Midway, a SS one made by Ranch Products and that has my rifle working fine.  The bolt lock was actually scraped where the plunger was hitting it and I had to smooth it out.

I saw a nearly identical problem at a shoot last fall.  A 3d party polymer extended mag release, that had deformed / worn after being repeatedly worked hard & off center, and bound up the lock plate.  Fortunately, it failed on the 2nd to last course of fire of the shoot.  Shooter was advised to trash it and get a metal replacement.  It seems many of the plastic aftermarket ones just can't take the pounding that an Appleseed dishes out.

Reminds me of a steel challenge match this weekend and a friend was having issues with his modified Glock. As I teased him about it a FLETC instructor said "Hey! Glocks are great, till we improve upon them." ...O.L.