The only challenge in taking the sideplate off was the amount of mung that had built up around the screw heads over the last few decades.
Once inside it was pretty normal except for the moment of panic when the hand just sort of flopped around on the trigger. It took me a minute to realize that the hand tension was provided by a spring and plunger in the sideplate and not the coiled wire spring inside the trigger that I'm used to seeing.
Other than cleaning I only did two things while I was inside. The rebound spring appeared to have been pulled out of an F250 pickup and had obviously been shortened. I replaced that one with a stock spring from a K38 that was slightly smaller in diameter but seemed to fit and function correctly. The K38 spring was also much lighter even though it had not been shortened. The original mangled spring went into a numbered envelope to go into the growing pile of OE parts in the back of the safe.
The second thing I did was to round off a burr on the bolt that almost cut me while I was cleaning it. No files here....just a ceramic stone to remove the sharp edge.
A bunch of Hoppe's and a few Q-tips later, everything popped back into place easily. I'm glad that I learned how to do things like cylinder stops and bolt removal on the trainwreck guns before I got into this one....
The yoke alignment was good and the ejector rod is the straightest one I've ever seen. The rear gauge is in spec with a .060" feeler gauge entering easily and a .068" gauge not entering at all. Cylinder gap was .008" at the rearmost travel and .005" with a wooden wedge behind the cylinder, giving .003" of endplay.
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SWCA #3942 / SWHF #988
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