Redhawk Jamming - any ideas...???

[AJMD429]

My 45 Colt/ACP Redhawk will occasionally refuse to allow a full trigger-pull, without letting the trigger go fully forward, and trying again.

I sent the new, barely-fired gun back to Ruger last year due to this, and they thought it might be that the trigger group wasn't seating fully in the frame (there was a small gap), so they fitted it better, and returned the gun to me.

I didn't really 'check it out' when it came back, because the problem had seemed random, and I assumed they had corrected it.
Unfortunately NOT.....it happened again....

After some dry-firing, I realized I can reproduce the 'jam' by not allowing the trigger to FULLY go forward after the hammer falls. There are several 'clicks' as the trigger goes forwards, but the very last one is faint, and only happens just as the trigger is fully forward.

If the trigger is released suddenly, so it returns forward briskly, the jam seldom happens, if at all. However if it is released gently or slowly, there is a 50/50 chance the last 'click' won't happen, and the next trigger pull won't work (the trigger moves maybe 1/4 of a full pull, and the hammer starts back about 1/4 of the full travel, then it stops).

Any ideas what the issue is...? I know I can ship it back again to Ruger, but would be interested to know what might be the problem. Is this something anyone else here has noticed with any of their Ruger double-actions (I have three other, older, Redhawks, a couple Speed-Sixes, and a couple SP-101's, and haven't ever noticed this issue before).

[Blaine]

This is not very helpful, but send it back and explain it just like you did here......

[vancelw]

Don't listen to Blaine!

Send it to Me I'll get it back to you after extensive testing...

Now you have me curious. I have a couple of Redhawks and will get them out and see if I can figure it out tomorrow.

[Blaine]

Don't listen to Blaine!

Send it to Me I'll get it back to you after Expensive testing...

Now you have me curious. I have a couple of Redhawks and will get them out and see if I can figure it out tomorrow.

There, I fixed it.
Pink is the color of his gunsmithing romper.

[cnjarvis]

Based on your description, I'd guess that this is the issue: http://www.grantcunningham.com/2010/12/ ... ding-them/

My GP100 does it too.

[milton]

Sounds like a typical Ruger double action to me.If you are used to the reset of a Smith revolver do not expect the Ruger to be the same.You have to move the trigger finger all the way forward to let the Ruger trigger to reset and when you change from a Smith to a Ruger you have to really concentrate on trigger control.
If it were mine I would take the trigger group out,tear it down ( watch for flying springs!!!)and carefully polish out any burrs.I would then find a good stainless steel lube and lube the group.I have had the trigger parts in my Redhawk gall due to improper lube and once I polished the trigger group and applied the correct lube the trigger got better,not an S&W but OK.

[vancelw]

Don't listen to Blaine!

Send it to Me I'll get it back to you after Expensive testing...

Now you have me curious. I have a couple of Redhawks and will get them out and see if I can figure it out tomorrow.

There, I fixed it.
Pink is the color of his gunsmithing romper.

Put down the bottle Blaine.....
I don't know why you're hating....My romper is blue and yours is striped....and you are supposed to be 1000 feet from that young lady.

Bond romper.jpg

romper old man striped.jpg

[mikld]

Don't have that problem, but if I couldn't retrain myself I might try a bit stronger trigger return spring. I had a 1911 that I had to teach myself to lightly touch the inside front of the trigger guard with my finger on release. Can't remember all the details as to why, but it only took a bit of thought/practice...

[vancelw]

Both of my Redhawks will do that if I don't allow the trigger to reset properly.
My GP100 will do it, too, if I don't let the trigger reset properly.
My SP101 would not do it. Must have a slightly different trigger mechanism.

[3leggedturtle]

Make sure the ejector rod is tight, mine used to loosen up and cause that exact problem. Blue loctite fixed it. Todd

[Blaine]

Don't listen to Blaine!

Send it to Me I'll get it back to you after Expensive testing...

Now you have me curious. I have a couple of Redhawks and will get them out and see if I can figure it out tomorrow.

There, I fixed it.
Pink is the color of his gunsmithing romper.

Put down the bottle Blaine.....
I don't know why you're hating....My romper is blue and yours is striped....and you are supposed to be 1000 feet from that young lady.
Bond romper.jpg

Dang, that's Gay....

[AJMD429]

Based on your description, I'd guess that this is the issue: http://www.grantcunningham.com/2010/12/ ... ding-them/

As the Ruger resets, at one point it transmits a unique and very discernible “click” through the trigger. At the point the ‘click’ happens, the cylinder bolt – the little thing at the bottom of the frame that pops up to lock the cylinder – hasn’t yet reset, which means the cylinder is still locked and the trigger isn’t yet be able to unlock it. The hand, which rotates the cylinder and is attached to the trigger, is trying to rotate something that’s held solid. It’s a little like trying to turn a doorknob that’s locked, and that’s what the shooter feels through the trigger.

I think this is it..........but in my particular gun achieving 'reset' means in some cases having to actually put my finger behind the trigger and nudge it forward just a bit more than it naturally goes if not released briskly (as in starting to fire and not firing, or letting the hammer down from a 'single-action-mode' cocked position, or just being too slow in releasing it).

I'm not sure what part of the trigger bears on what part of the frame (or other part), that stops forward travel, but perhaps a burr there is inhibiting full forward travel (and reset).

I may get brave and check it out myself, but may just send it back to Ruger and let them fix it.

I just wish when you sent a gun (or anything else) in for repair work, the factory would TELL you what they did or thought was wrong; at best you just get a checked-box on a form.

[crs]

My S&W model 39 does not have that problem, but then it is old and well broken in (sort of like the shooter).

[AJMD429]

Well, I fixed it, sort of.

Good information on this post from a guy named Ioweganon the RugerNET Forum:

• http://rugerforum.net/ruger-double-acti ... ost3183818

(...there are two RugerForum's - RugerForum.net, and RugerForum.com - don't ask me why...).

UPDATE: Thanks for all the replies.

I took it apart, polished off a couple burrs, lubed it, and reassembled it, and it works MUCH better. I can still MAKE the jam happen intentionally, but it won't just happen from a lazy return.

I plan to fire 500 rounds or so through it, assess the 'jam' again, and if it is at all an issue, send it back or attempt the more intense repair Iowegan so kindly illustrated. Definitely has to be 100% before going to grizzly country.

What I did in the interim was interesting though.

I swapped trigger groups and hammers from my new 45 ACP/Colt Redhawk (503-88xxx) with a 15-20 year old 44 Mag Redhawk (502-14xxx) that I've shot so much it really is smooth, and with that gun I can't even intentionally get the trigger to fail to reset. I was just curious as to whether or not I could do the 'simple fix' of putting the more reliable parts in the gun I'd use for bear protection, and the less reliable ones for now in the gun I use more for deer hunting. NEITHER gun functioned well with the other one's guts...! Other than smoother surfaces on the older gun, there were no obvious parts differences or spring tensions I could tell just by hand. Both guns were ROUGH in trigger pull, the trigger sometimes staying rearward and needing pushed forward. I thought it was just my re-assembly technique (or lack of), since getting the plunger in a Ruger Mark-II 22 LR Pistol is easy compared to getting the one in the Redhawk aligned. However, disassembly and reassembly two or three times got me the same results, and in between when I put the old parts in the old gun and the new parts in the new gun, I got the same thing as before - the old gun smooth and flawless, and the new one rougher (but way better than with the 'old' parts in it), and easy to 'jam' like before.

Not sure what to make of that, other than to make a mental note that I can't just 'swap parts' in those guns like some others....

At this point, I'm leaving the old one as-is, since it is smooth and reliable, and will just work with the new one to get it to that point. If the parts don't swap, that's fine.

UPDATE Part Two:

After a couple hundred dry-fires, the need to actively PUSH the trigger forward for complete reset started again, so I took Iowegan's advice, and effected at least a temporary repair; unfortunately I didn't have any brass tubing, but I did have an ink pen that had exploded, strewing the little plastic ratchet parts about. It turned out one of them was a perfect diameter to form sort of a bushing, and it MARKEDLY reduced the wobble of the Trigger Plunger. What this did was interesting - it made the 'jam' much more consistent, the feel of the 'reset' much more precise, but it did still happen. So I used a hard Arkansas stone to polish the nose where it contacts the cylinder bolt, just enough to allow it to pop up and over it when the trigger is about 0.06" from fully forwards (this now duplicates my older Redhawk) instead of having to be FULLY forward, and sometimes given that extra 'nudge'.

I will get a chunk of brass tubing for more durability, however - I don't want anything that might crack and come off and gum up the works down the road. Speaking of that, the little Trigger Guard Latch Retaining Ring is a pretty fragile thing, and loose, and it seems a roll-pin through the shaft of the Trigger Guard Latch would be less prone to coming off under recoil.

Anyway - problem solved - Thanks Iowegan.....!

[AJMD429]

......what's the saying about countin' chickens afore they hatch....???

I bought the brass tubing today, excited to make the repair more permanent, and so today I'm fiddlin with the Redhawk, and try to slow the trigger's return so as to make the 'jam' happen (which I could NOT do last night).

And it jammed...

Repeatedly...

So I watch the cylinder bolt carefully, and realize that "when I push the trigger forward", it pulls the bolt away from the cylinder as the trigger plunger is popping up over the bearing surface.....but, "when I push the trigger forward" - I have also been subtly putting some pressure on the cylinder and forcing it to rotate clockwise (not the normal operational rotation).

What actually is allowing the trigger to reset fully now appears to be the [abnormal, forced] rotation of the cylinder actually camming the cylinder bolt out of the locking notch; there is actually a radius on the trailing edge of the bolt that the little dished-out area beside the cylinder bolt notch catches and appears to push the bolt away from the cylinder enough to reset the trigger. It does NOT appear to be a simple 'binding' issue, in that if I wiggle the cylinder it won't free the bolt up to move on its own; it is only when I really torque the cylinder clockwise that the bolt pops out of the notch. I hadn't realized that when trying to re-create the 'jam', what I thought was un-doing it (pushing the trigger forward) may not have been the only thing that was un-doing it; evidently it was un-jamming when I put some clockwise torque on the cylinder.

Maybe I hadn't noticed this because the trigger also required the forward push (...I remember that so distinctly...!) until I fixed that part last night.

Unfortunately, although the shimming did make things perceptably more consistent, and I do think the stoning of the bearing surface (5 light strokes with a hard Arkansas stone) improved the 'reset point' as felt through the trigger, the durn thing still jams with ordinary dry-firing. I thought about a range session to see if the shock of live ammo would prevent the jam from happening, but the gun still shouldn't lock up like that, even dry-firing....! I am not going to wear Kevlar gloves just so I can keep one hand on the cylinder to torque-assist...

The end-point will probably be another trip to Ruger, but I'm still curious as to what the problem is, because I want to know what to watch for if the do fix it (those 'repair letters' you get back seldom say anything helpful), and the way repair services go these days, I'm not sure they actually will fix it. Gone are the days of walking into the gun shop, showing the gunsmith what is going on, so he [or she] gets the real story and fixed the right thing. I'm not even sure the letter I wrote last time describing the problem got read by the guy who worked on it; these days a clerk types everything into a bunch of computer check-boxes, just like in health care, and nobody really knows what is going on.