9422 Magnum problem.

[gamekeeper]

A while back I took the scope off my 9422M and put a Marbles Sporting Back Sight on, I could not try it out till today and at forty yards I was not even on the paper! It shot very very low and way to the left. I tapped the rear sight to the right and still it was way to the left, so I tapped the front sight to the left and got it to shoot straight, however to get near the bull I had to put the rear sight on full elevation. This don't seem right to me at forty yards I should be able to get close to the bull without sights!
I have just zeroed my 9422 LR and it shoots fine.
This carbine had a broken stock when I bought it (real cheap) so I have had the gun apart and restocked.

What I would like to know is, could I have changed the accuracy by over or under tightening the barrel bands or was the gun damaged when the stock got broke
I did want to keep this gun but if I can't zero it without the sights nearly falling out of their dovetails I think I'll sell it back to the dealer and tell him there's a problem.

BTW Joe the saddle ring will go back on the LR

[Blaine]

The trick is going to be to get a lower front sight if you want to keep the back one Brownells has a sight height calculator to figger this out for you.....Put the rear sight back to midway for doing the calculations so you have some leeway both up and down!!

[gamekeeper]

I have just put the original Winchester sight back on but there does not seem to be a lot of difference in sight height between them. My old 9422M only needed full elevation at 200 yds.
Even if I use a lower front sight the windage adjustment still looks like I only shoot in a Hurricane!

[J Miller]

game keeper,

If the stock was broken and now it won't shoot center no matter how much you adjust the sights, I'm thinking there was a chance the barrel was bent. How about tying a string to the front sight and stretch it back over the barrel and see if it follows the center of it?
You should be able to at least get on the paper with the sights centered in the dovetails and elevator notches as well.

Just a thought.

[gamekeeper]

Joe, that's what I was thinking, I don't think the barrel is bent but something is out of kinter somewhere I have killed two foxes with it, one when scoped and one with the original sights, Could the barrel bands have such an affect on accuracy?? I stripped it down as I had to refinish the new stock and old forearm.

[J Miller]

Joe, that's what I was thinking, I don't think the barrel is bent but something is out of kinter somewhere I have killed two foxes with it, one when scoped and one with the original sights, Could the barrel bands have such an affect on accuracy?? I stripped it down as I had to refinish the new stock and old forearm.

I've had every lever gun I own apart down to the last screw. Some of them several times. And once back together I've never had their point of impact change. I don't crank my barrel band screws down real tight, nor are they loose.

Do you have a gunsmith that knows anything about lever guns in the UK?

Joe

[Kansas Ed]

Remove the forearm and all attachments. Fire it as a single shot. I mean no magazine tube or nothing. If it shoots to point of aim, add stuff and continue shooting. Leave the forearm for last. I have a feeling that if the stock was broken, then the barrel is bent as Joe suggested. Not really a big deal, but will need to be tweaked. We had a guy at FA who had run over his 22 with a pickup truck. Bent the barrel so that it wouldn't shoot to sights. Chucked it up in the barrel vise and tweaked it back a little at a time just past the bent spot, until it shot back to sights. It shot quite well after that.

Ed

[mescalero1]

At one time, spining a barrel between vee blocks and looking down the bore, while appling pressure from a vee block mounted upside down, with a hand crank attachment mount above & in the middle of the other two vee blocks was the hallmark of a barrel smith.
I have seen Eddie Vasquez do this at W.R. Weaver Co, El Paso, Texas, countless time to riflescopes from 1974 to 1979.
The un- bending of a barrel is nothing new, or science fiction; used to go on all the time.
Try to find someone these days who REALLY knows how to do it, not likely.

[gamekeeper]

Thanks for all the advice, I apreciate having so much help on tap.
If I still had contacts at Westley Richards where I worked back in the early seventies I would ask them to put the barrel on their jig to see if it was indeed bent.
I think I will take it back to the dealer I got it from and tell him there's a issue with it and see if he will take it back.
If I get the 30/30 I'm hoping for the .22Mag would not get much use anyway.

John.

[Coldfingers]

John.

I had a 9422M that, from the factory, needed the rear sight almost falling off the left side of the barrel to hit POA.

Darn thing drove me nuts for the better part of twenty years. Killed alot of stuff with it but...it drove me NUTS just looking at it.

The little rifle is now residing with my oldest son In Montana, driving both him and the songdogs nuts.

I replaced it with a Marlin 94C and have not looked back. The 30-30 ought to do you just as well. Even with component costs these days a feller can reload a centerfire for what the 22Mags cost and get the benifit of cranking em up for more serious game.

OTOH my 9422 has everything lined up straight as can be. Weird.

I wonder if there was a problem with the barrels back then

Hope all works out for you.

Scotty

[Nath]

GK, place the gun on it's side on your table get a striaght edge like a 2' rule to sit on the slab sided reciever even if you have to pack it with something flat and true.
At the end of the rule nearest the muzzle take a measure from a repeatable place once the gun is turned over. This will show if there is a drastic bend.
If there is some bend we need to locate where the bend is next before we go further.
Don't panic, it's not rocket science.

Nath.

[kimwcook]

Wasn't there a post recently about some ole gunsmith that would wrap the bbl. of SAA's on a wooden table to get them to shoot to POA? And, that he did it all the time without ill effect? I thought that was on this forum, maybe it was on the single action forum.

[thornblom]

Hey Game Keeper,

Back in the early 1980's I had a winchester 9422-M that was the same way. To get it to shoot center at 25 yards required taping the rear sight way to the left. Almost to the point of it falling off the left side of the barrel. When I bought it, it was new in the box and nothing was wrong with it, no broken anything. I did as the gentleman above did, sighted it in and used it and cussed it everytime I looked at it. I kept it for about 3 years and traded it off.

I had another 9422-M in 1973, I think a first year model, that shot perfect right out of the box. No sight adjustment needed. This was before the XTR version and it just had a plane jane finish on the stock. The one I had in the 1980's was the XTR version with checkering.

From what little I know of barrel making, there is a straightening process done to each barrel after machining is done, I don't remember if it is before or after heat treating. It could be that inadvertantly, Winchester used a small batch of barrels for the 9422-M's that had somehow skated by the straightening process. I have a shooting partner in Yucca Valley, California, who has straightened several barrels in the fork of a tree, just bending a little at a time until the rifle shoots like you want it to. I know it sounds crude, but like the gentleman above said, "It ain't rocket science."

I love the 9422's and the 9422-M's but do not own one now. My first one was an absolute tack driver and I sure wish I had it back. Maybe, someday, I'll find another one, at a good price (hahhahahha) and it will not be traded off this time.

Sincerely,
Dave (Bubba) Thornblom

[Hobie]

For the amount of deviation described a barrel wouldn't have to be bent very much at all. One could likely fix the gun by bending the barrel whether or not it is bent now. The v-block system is neater but rezeroing would be a bit time consuming.

[gamekeeper]

Hobie, you are quite correct, I watched the rifle smiths at Westley Richards many a time correcting barrels that I could hardly see any bend in at all. Pity none of these guys are still around or they would have done the job for me free of charge. The guys there now wouldn't know me from Adam.
I have decided to let the gun go, I will hardly need it anyway with the 30/30 and my other 9422 shoots just fine.

BTW I'm still waiting for the police to say that I can have the Winchester 94.

[hammerman]

I've had problems on 2 9422m guns where the sights or barrel (can't remember) were put on crooked from the factory. One was an XTR and the other was as 70's model NIB. Both had the same problem where the sights were sitting off to the right on the barrel. The XTR gun shot extemely low and to the left or right. I had to move the elevator all the way up just to hit center at 50 yards and the sight was almost falling out of the dovetail on the front. Sadly this was the first gun I'd ever bought and I got it from a gun show, so I have a bad taste for gun shows. A gunsmith sweated the front sight on straight and it sure helped, but I ended up getting rid of it. The NIB gun I had bought on gunbroker and the sights were the first thing I checked, and when I say they were crooked, I sent it back.

I could be that the gun had a scope for a reason because of the sights.

Now that I think of it, there is a groove in the barrel looking at it from the reciever end, and it wasn't horizontal like it should be, but pointing up a little. So the barrels were put on crooked from the factory.