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Hello,
I recently got out the old family 62a. My brother and I learned to shoot on this rifle before we were teenagers. I’m now 45, and this rifle had not been fired in probably more than 20 years. Never having cleaned a gun before, I managed to figure out how to go over it, clean it – (was not put away fully cleaned, there appeared to me to be fouling a bout 3-6 inches from both muzzle and breech ends of the barrel) looked like a thin coat of oils was run through. The front sight is bent a little to the left, which is funny because I shot it yesterday, and at a pistol range – at about 60 feet – I was only missing by about 1/2 inch consistently south/east, for about 100 shots.
Aside from the oddity of the sighting, I had a few rounds seem to get bent/dented in the side of the casing by the feeding mechanism. It seemed to jam a few times, but i was able to get the round to load with a little cycling for a minute. Thinking about it, one of the plastic dummy rounds I used to practice dry firing first, also had the same crimp/bend in it when I collected and picked them up I sort of noticed; but it was only about 1 out of 14 – and then at the range only 2 or 3 out of 200 had an issues.
One thing of note – is I fired, subsonic, regular, and some 1,300 fps Winchester HV. The subsonic was also Winchester. One thing that comes to mind is maybe the subsonic and dummy rounds are softer – that the other cartridges? I wish I had paid more attention to which rounds were jamming, but now that I think about it – it was not the copper plated hv rounds anyway.
Anyway – saw several posts on the 62a here – thought this would be a good place to start. I also have an 1894 to go over and figure out. Oh, the feeding mechanism, when I looked at it, the rounds seemed a little floppy/floatey to me as they get fed into the breech end, like the end of the rounds could possible hit the breech and bounce in anyway, but I didn’t really like how that works, but maybe there is a spring adjustment or something in there that someone with more experience can point me towards.
Oh – one more – I think it is just about impossible to clean this from the breech end without removing the bolt, which I haven’t done yet – but saw the process in a youtube video someone was good enough to make, seems easy enough – not with a traditional rod anyway, maybe with a bore snake.
Is there a source for an owners or service manual someone can point me at? youtube is great and all, but …
-Mike
You need to do a complete cleaning of the action, and since you are a novice at this you need a Service Manuals of the Winchester Model 62A Rifle. It will allow you to do a complete and correct job. Here’s where I recommend, because you get a digital copy immediately, with the printed copy by mail.
http://afdeals.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=17.
Please don’t do any bending or adjusting, you’ll do more harm then good, and some parts may be irreplaceable.
Vince
Southern Oregon
NRA member
Fraternal Order of Eagles
“There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle.”
Teddy Roosevelt
I actually ordered that from afdeals a few months ago – and they never send me anything and I could not log in – when I tried to contact them I got no response, so I figured they are a fake website. If they are real, they owe me a manual, or my $8 back, but I really want the manual, but I gave up on them.
The rifle has been cleaned fully, and gone over several times. Two days ago, I put 200 rounds through it. I found yesterday, and recalled from cleaning, that a q-tip, when put inside the carrier with solvent on it, just caught and pulled and made a mess with all the little fibers pulling everywhere. I stretched the magazine spring out a little, to liven up the magazine, and it still did the same thing – after observing with some dummy caps. I also tried to smooth polish the interior of the carrier with light steel wool. seemed to make the dummy round enter the carrier smoother, but I was light with the abrasive and when I put a q-tip back into the carrier, it did not get all pulled apart, so it seems better anyway. There are a couple small chips out of the metal in the carrier, that make me think, the cartridge is getting hung up on once in a while on the sharp edge. My theory was smoothing the chipped edge a hair, might prevent the cartridge from getting stuck at this spot.
When it sticks, the round only comes out half way from the magazine and the round holds the carrier mechanism down, and the spent casing doesn’t eject, because the spring just pushes the carrier up, but half the round is still in the magazine and this is when the round gets a small indent right in the side, because it is being bent in half. It may do this every 30-50 cycles of the action, but it does it. I still have to consider the connection between the magazine and the rifle, possibly there is a lip there the casing can get caught on, and I also have in mind to buff the inside end of the magazine tube a little, the follower makes a little more of a noise when near the end of the tube, so there maybe a tiny burr or something mucking up the action every once in a while.
I took me a while to track down that the round is cycled from the magazine into the carrier, from what appears to be the exclusive pressure applied from the magazine spring, there is no mechanical action, so this seems like an engineering weak spot IMO. I can’t tell yet if there is a small lip for the casing to get stuck on – for not the loading round, but the one before it – and at the same time the loading case hits one of the little metal burrs inside the carrier. I did repeat the same failure to load with plastic dummy rounds, but I think I may have solved the loading issue, if it does the same thing with real rounds still – I can further smooth any burrs inside the carrier, and dig deeper into if there is a lip or ridge where the magazine tube ends – or if the 2nd round back hangs on something, or if the combination of events just leads to a compounding scenario leading to failure to load.
Never having cleaning or owner a firearm before, my best guess would be the small chips were caused by cleaning from the muzzle end, and jamming the tip of the cleaning rod into the carrier. To clean from the breach end with a common rod, the bolt has to be taken out, which thanks to some fine youtube contributors, was easy enough to figure out how to do.
Sorry you didn’t get the manual. I haven’t used those guys in 3 years but here’s a reliable site … https://doeverythingmanual.com/products/winchester-model-63-22-do-everything-manual
Vince
Southern Oregon
NRA member
Fraternal Order of Eagles
“There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle.”
Teddy Roosevelt
thanks, I’ll definitely check that out. I found it relatively easy to find some documentation on the 1894, but the 62a seems a little more elusive. I did find this for the Rossi clone, it is a decent online parts list, and has some basic troubleshooting.
My recommendation would be to hire a gunsmith to do this type of work. I’m doing it because it was my Dad’s gun, but the time it takes to figure things out, I think a decent gunsmith would have done in a few minutes, what to me now seem like somewhat obvious steps to smooth up the feeding.
My issue seemed to focus on feeding, so I’ll step through what I did today
took apart the magazine tube, cleaned crud off spring – and stretched the spring; I measured how long it was before, and it did extend out about 8 or 10 inches further with a couple decent long pulls and hold that length, this should add a little extra nrg to the rounds as they exit the tube and enter the action into the carrier/lifter.
Also, for the magazine tube, I took some 0 steel wood, and made a little ball and pushed it through the entire tube a couple times, to really clean out an buff inside the tube. I spent extra time where the round exits the tube – there is definitely a little lip there that stops the follower, but if I had to guess – I would say this small point that narrows, has a very low clearance for the base of the 22 rounds, and would straighten/point the round a touch as it exits the tube. I worked an empty case through this area from the exit end, and used a rod to move the empty case from the other end, in the middle I put a piece of the 0 steel wood, to smooth and polish this area, I would say I did this with medium to light effort. Even when done, the empty casing definitely still catches on the lip that is at the end of the tube a little. I then ran some cleaner and some patches through the tube to clean out any steel wool dust, very lightly oiled the inside and outside of the magazine tube and reassembled.
I also took the spent casing and using a toothpick and the casing worked a small ball of 0 steel wool back and forth in the carrier. I did this inverted so the little particles would not fall and enter anything inside the 62a. I did this for a while, the little steel wool pieces would wrap around the shell and I think this had a smoothing polishing effect. One thing of note about the carrier is in the lifter area where the shell is held, is grooved heavily, it was never smooth, and it looks like the machining is apparent. This would be considered light/moderate effort. I only did the tube and the carrier slowly for maybe 3-5 minutes each.
I cleaned out the carrier, blew out with canned air, then wiped with dry cue-tip, then blew out again, then solvent, then dry patches, then a very light oil patch.
When I tested the carrier with a spent casing and a dummy round, it again seemed to enter and exit the carrier easier and with less binding, but still it did seem to catch just a little, but I can always go back in and touch it up more if it still has a feeding problem.
I then ran 3 magazines of 12 snap caps through the entire action and it had no problems at all.
Next step testing at range again.
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