What would cause a revolver to

[JDinAZ]

You can cycle it with the side plate off to see everything move to help figure out what's going on. Just push down on every part you can touch to make sure they are seated. Hold it flat with open side up. Put index finger tip on hand pivot, run trigger with middle finger, ride hammer with thumb so things don't go haywire. May have to push down and seat everything every few cycles to keep it moving.

Nice part is with side plate off you can watch the internals do their thing and see what's going on.

EDIT ADDED INFO
Ok so typically with a new to you gun first thing that comes out of my mouth is clean the everlovin snot out of it yourself and see what happens. Half the time things clear up. Atleast for me they do, maybe I'm just lucky who knows. But I had a little time this morn so I opened the safe and broke out the S&W Armorer's manual to see what it says. Here you go right from the horse's mouth. This is all it says about trouble shooting timing.

Page 22
Trouble shooting chart
#12 Improper timing

Probable cause. Corrective action.

Worn ratchet. Replace with oversized hand

Cylinder cramp. Refit locking bolt
Or
Remove burr on yoke
Or
Realign yoke
Or
Straighten extractor rod
Or
Replace center pin

Hand skipping. Realign hand

Worn or modified hand. Replace hand

Faulty stop action. Refit or replace cylinder stop and spring

 

[mike campbell]

I've never had a malfunction where the gun cocks and fires again on the same case, meaning the cylinder didn't advance....if that's what I'm reading.

When I shortstroke in DA, the cylinder advances part way. On the second stroke it skips and drops on the next chamber and I have skipped a live round. In essence, it turns two chambers for 1.5 strokes.

Sure seems to me the phenomenon of cocking, firing, but not indexing would speak clearly to a S&W armorer what the problem is.

 

[raljr1]

So, kind of the same thing happened again with this same gun. I just got it back from CS at S&W, had a "PC Tune Up, Clean and Oil" service done to the tune of $60 after the "PC Firearm Estimate and Range Test" to the tune of $45. I asked the guy on the phone if it was like with a car making a noise: you bring it in to the mechanic, but he can't recreate the noise, therefore there's nothing he can do. Guy on the phone said yes, it's just like that; if something was obviously wrong, it would be made right, otherwise there's nothing to be done.

Today I went to the range and shot two cylinders of .38 wadcutters SA, then shot three rounds of .357 in different loads in DA. Bang, bang, bang, click. (There was a few seconds in between as I was aiming.)

I swing out the cylinder to find three rounds fired, and the last round fired was indexed to the barrel, which means it was the last bang and click.

Earlier in this thread Wolverine and Mike in Reedley mentioned that I was short stroking the gun. Not sure that is possible when firing DA.

Look, I really don't want to send this back to S&W as I want this to be my primary carry. Besides, if something were obviously wrong, I'll assume for now that it was fixed. However, if it's gonna be my primary carry, I'd like to make sure it works.

What I'd like to do is create a set of bench tests to see if I can nail this problem down to either a specific chamber in the cylinder, or specific kind of ammo, or a specific action that I'm doing, or whatever else it might be. If it turns out there is something wrong, I will send it back.

I'm thinking:

Test 1
a) clean gun
b) shoot two cylinders of .38 DA
c) shoot two cylinders of .357 (load 1, AE 158g soft point (local range ammo)) DA
d) shoot two cylinders of .357 (load 2, BB 19F, 140g short barrel load) DA

Before running the tests I'd like to mark the cylinders (not permanently) to see whether or not malfunctions are happening in the same places. Any ideas on best way to do this? Any constructive criticism on how to change the above test?

In your test, I might suggest taking your trigger finger completely out of the trigger guard between each shot.. sometimes with my fat fingers I'll not let the trigger return all the way. If your finger comes all the way out of the guard and off of the trigger, you cannot short stroke the trigger.

Robert

 

[H Richard]

Just one thought, have you dry fired it pointing straight up several times? Did it happen then? I had a K38 that worked every time if pointed at the target, or in a downward orientation. If fired in an elevated orientation sometimes it would not rotate the cylinder. It was a partially broken hand spring, just the tip on one foot of the spring broke off.