BSA/Webley underlever not cocking??

[edbear2]

I may have posted this before, but anyway, I was looking at a BSA light model for someone local, the gun would not "hold" as he put it...ie. the trigger/sear was not engaging the piston rod...anyway, it arrived in bits, and all the internal bearing parts looked fine,...I then remembered a similar problem on a mark 3 Webley I had a while back, so I pulled down one of my light models, popped off the short cocking link, and compared it on a flat surface to the problem gun's one........as I thought, the problem was that his lever had "closed up" in the scolloped area that clears the main cocking lever pivot, and this was reducing the cocking stroke by just enough to stop the trigger engaging.........they are malleable steel, and are easy to move, either in a padded vise, or under a press.......30 seconds work, and all is O.K. again.

So...always worth removing the mainspring, and checking the stroke if you get one like this in the future

How does this happen???.....may be due to vicious cocking, or heavy handed treatment over a period....as the lever "closes up", the person will be pulling harder and harder each time to make it hold, until it reaches the point of no engagement......a very dangerous/expensive condition on these, as the sear especially is prone to shattering if poorly engaged

[Phil Russell]

Yup .. been there, done it, found it.
I have seen this a few times where the cocking lever is basically folded sheet. I have often wondered about fixing a steel bar in the 'slot' to beef it up a little, but have never done so. A tweak in a vice usually cures the problem.

I thought you were going to say the spring had had some washers added, or was the wrong spring and had thus become coil bound ...

Cheers, Phil

[ggggr]

I,v had this problem on guns a few times---Webley mk3, Pre war Bsa and two break barrels that I cant remember. I put the arm on two blocks of wood and then used anther small block where I thought it needed bending and gave it a tap with a hammer 4 gun solved though.