Hey guys, remember me? Time for another update on my Luger progress. I got some more questions for you guys too, so buckle down and listen up.
Monday I came home from work and my parts order had arrived from the LugerDoc. (Pics below) I immediately set about refurbishing the better of my Dad's old magazines.
-As I mentioned before this thing had been in a fire. On the old mag there was still a small remanent of the mag bottom. It was black, and I assumed it was originally a black nylon one like my new MecGar mag. Once I popped the pin out and removed the remanent of the bottom, on closer inspection I realized that it was a charred piece of wood. This magazine originally had a wooden bottom! Anyway when I ordered from LugerDoc I opted for the aluminum bottom because I'm kinda hard on my stuff and I figured the aluminum would hold up better than wood. So anyway it took some doing, but I got the magazine all put together and it seems to function well. I haven't used it with live rounds but it worked fine with snap caps. The mag spring I got was a round MecGar one. I noticed that on my MecGar mag there is a cylindrical spring dealy under the follower, I didn't have that for this mag but it seems to work fine cycling five snap caps without it.
Next I set about putting on the refurbish artillery sight.
Now here is where I have some questions for you guys. First off the sight looks good on the gun, but when I look down the sights it is crooked. I'm not sure if it shows in the picture I took, but when I look down the sights the rear sight looks askew. Also there is a little centering screw underneath the adjustable part that raises up. I managed to loose it off before I slipped the sight on the barrel, but how am I supposed to tighten down this thing? I can't reach it with a screw driver, am I suppose to punch out the pin for the top part and take it off in order to tighten down this screw? Would tightening this screw help my rear sight be less crooked?
So anyway the mag and the sight was day one. After that I decided to call it a day. Tuesday after work I tackled the other stuff. The mid axle retaining pin, firing and extractor spring all went fine. The hold open spring was another story...
The new hold open spring was much stiffer than my old one. That's fine, I ordered the new one because my old one was too weak. The hold open engaged too often. So that's good, it took some doing but I managed to get the new spring inserted into the mech and then I got the whole thing installed in the gun.
Problem, maybe the new spring is too strong because now the hold open doesn't work. (keep in mind I haven't taken it to the range yet to try with live rounds...) but before when I pulled back the toggle on an empty mag it stayed open like a champ every time. Even with my refurbished mag on monday night. Now with the new hold open spring in, it doesn't seem to push the mech high enough to catch the bolt. A few times I managed to make it work by pushing up on the bottom of the mag and reefing back the toggle really hard with my right hand, but even then it's iffy, and a few times when I had it opened like that it snapped closed with a jerk of the gun. (Once I removed the mag while it was opened, I put a few snap caps in the mag and then as soon as I inserted the loaded mag back in, the action snapped back closed.) Maybe it'll work better with live rounds but I kind of doubt it, and I saw a thread here where some one suffered a broken hold open mech.
My gun's not numbers matching but this hold open mech is an original so I really don't want to risk breaking it. Maybe shooting it like this would be too much of a risk. Is there anything you guys could recommend I do to deal with this?
