I have a Rossi 92 short rifle (rifle pattern, 20" barrel) in .357 Magnum, and a Rossi rifle (rifle pattern, 24" barrel) in .357 Magnum:
I also have a Rossi 92 carbine (20" barrel) in 45 Colt:
I've given the Steve's Gunz DVD treatment to all three, including:
- stainless steel magazine follower;
- lighter ejector spring;
- shortened hammer spring;
- shortened magazine spring;
- thinned loading gate spring;
- polished shell plate detents;
- polished lever detent; and
- polished bolt cam surfaces.
I've also removed the pig tail safeties, as I found the design had a bad habit of getting itself switched on or off in brush, and there are few things worse than a safety that is unreliable.
Practically speaking, giving the rifle or carbine a thorough cleaning to remove all the swarf and gunk, and replacing the ejector spring will give you about 75% of the total improvement in action slickness. Putting 500 or so rounds through it will get you up to about 90% of its potential. Shortening the hammer spring and polishing the critical internal parts will get you to 100%, and get you there immediately.
The thinned loading gate spring and shortened magazine spring just make it a little faster and easier to load.
The stainless magazine follower doesn't have to be done right away, but it will eventually, swell, crack and start to stick in the tube. It's just easier to replace it with a stainless steel follower when you do the initial cleaning and polishing of the internals if you opt to do that.
The pig tail safety is mostly a matter of preference. The detent wasn't very effective on one of mine, leading to the unreliability issues. On a positive note, it does allow the action to be cycled with the safety on, which is a plus when clearing the weapon. If you remove it, then clear it like you would an old style Model 94 or Model 92 Winchester, holding the rear of the lever well clear of the trigger.
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All three of mine also received Marbles tang sights. The rifle and short rifle in .357 Magnum will shoot reliable 5 shot 2 MOA groups at 100 yards. The .45 Colt carbine isn't in that ballpark, as it's more along the lines of 4 MOA, but part of that is also the cartridge and the recoil.
If you load it at standard .45 Colt pressures, it's not bad to shoot, but it has the trajectory of a rainbow. If you load it up with a 255 grain bullet at 1800 fps or so, the trajectory is pretty flat, but the recoil is fierce.
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All three of mine also received several coats of Tru-oil on top of the factory stain, with the gloss knocked down to a semi gloss with a light touch and some 0000 steel wool.
The wood finish on them has varied over the years from pretty decent back in the 1980s, to all the charm of shoe polish 5-7 years ago. But the shoe polish looking stocks and forends look good with a tung oil or Tru-Oil finish on them.
The action was close to inoperable: even with the hammer retracted beforehand, operating the lever was like dragging an aircraft carrier through mud. Fortunately, I found someone for whom this carbine was his grail gun and I happily sold it.
