Hi again, I also have a newly acquired Model 66-8 2 3/4 inch, that has been abused. It also bound up while shooting. The ejector rod was bent and I straightened it. It is out of time on two chambers. The notches are not burred or dinged. I notice that with the chamber open, the cylinder latch pulled back to work the action and I pull the trigger watching the hand, that as the hammer falls the hand drops into the frame so that it does not protrude like all my other Smiths. Is this a problem or the result of the new design?

When a gun is out of time is common to be out of time on less then all six chambers? Looks like a trip to S&W for it.....

It sounds like the hand is either defective or the hand spring isn't on the proper leg of the hand. OTOH, I missed the brief era of the floating hand, there are a couple threads here on that. Search "floating hand". You can convert a floating hand gun to a standard hand gun. The hand is attached to the trigger and should have no reaction to the hammer. This needs to be fixed.

"Out of time" has specifc meaning to revolver mechanics. Exactly what do YOU mean by the use of the phrase? From your post it appears that the cylinder stop doesn't engage on two chambers of the cylinder? This can happen but the first thing you need to do is get the hand working properly. Once you've got that, you can worry about other stuff.

Better yet, send it back to S&W or find someone locally with revolver skills.

You are correct as to my definition of out of time. This is the new version model 66 and has several changes over the previous models, the hand being one of them. I will undoubtedly send this in, but I want to gain as much knowledge as I can about these conditions. Thanks for the input.