Winchester "Trapper" - Help - I need a professional.

[Thump]

Hello everyone;

The Good News: I own a 45 Colt - Win. Trapper. It is an excellent carry rifle.

The Bad News: The trigger pull is somewhere in the range of "medium gorilla". ~10-15#, I exagerate, but in truth it is really, really bad...

Any advice and the name of a good professional that I can ship my rifle to for a complete tune-up? I have read of some changes I might make myself - but I want it done right.

My thanks for any advice, or real world experience in fixing this problem.

[Chuck 100 yd]

Steve`s Guns is a good place to start I believe.
http://stevesgunz.com/
Give him a call.
He does a lot of 92`s. I assume yours is a 94 but
he may be just the guy to help you out.

[J Miller]

Thump,

The rebounding hammer action on the Win 94 AE trappers is complex and overly sprung.
I am not a professional gunsmith but I have one of these and what I did was take it apart.
Clean everything, polish everything that touches anything else in the lower tang. Make sure the main spring guide is smooth on the edges. They are usually sharp and drag on the spring badly. Then when reassembling the tang make sure the springs do not bind or rub against anything or the sides of the tang.
Just polishing the action will help a lot and you can do it yourself.
I am not in favor of cutting springs. And generally I don't even replace them ... but .... the 94AEs are just ridiculously heavy so I'd suggest a spring kit for it.
When done right you can get the triggers on these guns down to a very reasonable level and still have the rebounding hammer working if you want it.

If you don't want to do it yourself, then Chuck 100 yd's recommendation is the best.

Joe

[Nath]

Joes recomendations are good.

I had to stone/hone the sear on every ae I have had.

I got my latest from over 6lb down to 2lb all on stadard springs.

N.

[Old Savage]

Joe knows quite a bit about those Win 94s.

[Thump]

Thanks 'team'...

I appreciate the comments and information. I really like the little levergun, and I want to make it effective. I'll let you know what the result is when I get it fixed.

I do not post very often, and I really look forward to the response from all of you at 'leverguns.com'.

[new pig hunter]

I have a similar Winchester. I've done all the smoothing and polishing work Joe listed ..... easy to do, makes quite a difference in performance.

On a couple of Marlins I have discovered several of the machined surfaces, using a magnifying glass, actually look like cheese graters. Once you get all those sliding surfaces smoothed & polished, no more heavy trigger pull.

Cheers,

Carl

[Bill in Oregon]

Thump: Might want to lay in a spare cartridge lifter too. My buddy and I had identical .45 Colt Trappers and we both broke our lifters in two. The warranty station gunsmith said it was a common problem with the larger diameter pistol cases requiring the lifters to be thinner.

[piller]

For the stoning/polishing, I have seen the little plastic sticks with 3 different colors, each color being a different grit of diamond. They are with the sharpening equipment at places like Gander Mountain, Bass Pro, and Cabela's. I have seen them in other places, too, and they look as if they would work ok for the initial smoothing as they should remove the high spots pretty fast. I don't like diamond for the final finish, but it will get me close to where I want in a hurry when I am working on a knife edge, so it might work for you on the parts you are looking at. Use caution as diamond takes the metal off much faster than an oilstone.

[J Miller]

Thump: Might want to lay in a spare cartridge lifter too. My buddy and I had identical .45 Colt Trappers and we both broke our lifters in two. The warranty station gunsmith said it was a common problem with the larger diameter pistol cases requiring the lifters to be thinner.

That's one I've not heard before. My 1985 vintage .45 Colt Trapper has well over 3K rounds through it and has never missed a beat. No problems with the carrier at all.
I do know at least one, maybe two members here have had .357 carriers break. I have one of them. It was a bad casting from the start.

Perhaps in later years USRAC had a run of bad carriers. That would explain it.

Joe