Cleaning a new Rossi

The Rossi Model R92, a lightweight carbine for Cowboy Action, hunting, or plinking! Includes Rossi manufactured Interarms, Navy Arms, and Puma trade names.
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Barkley
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Cleaning a new Rossi

Post by Barkley »

OK here are some of the dumb questions I was talking about over on what caliber I have. What I want to do with this 92 is what I do to all my guns. Take it down and give it a through cleaning like I do with any gun I buy. The manual that came with it is a joke, sorry it's true. Looking around You Tube and I don't like what I see. I figure I'll ask people who really like these guns.

I'm not that much into grease except on the rails of semi auto pistols. On the recommendation of my gunsmith friend I use Kroil for all lubrication and most cleaning. Does a great job and my guns run well. With that as a preexisting condition so to speak, what is the best way to clean up this neat gun. Life and work have been so crazy I haven't been to the range in 8 months but will make some time to shoot this before too long.
Archer
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Re: Cleaning a new Rossi

Post by Archer »

Youtube can be useful but it can also be somewhat dangerous.

Kroil IMO is a good penetrating oil, an acceptable cleaning fluid and probably not really persistent enough for my lubricating needs. I also have some concern that as a penetrating oil if it gets on the case heads it may penetrate primers and may desensitize them to impact.

The classic method of cleaning the Rossi when it was shipped gunked up in cosmoline like goo was to remove the spring end cap, remove the stock and fore end and to spray non-chlorinated brake or carb cleaner through the action, barrel and mag tube to cut the gunk in between cycling the action multiple times. (You can leave the handguard in place but you want to avoid getting the cleaner on any of the wood as it will strip the finish.) You can remove the lever, locking lugs and bolt and scrub the bore from the rear at this point if you desire but you may want to look at some of those Youtube vids or some of the threads here for the 'tricks' of getting the bolt back in place using an empty shell and keeping track of which parts go where. It is also a good time to replace the plastic follower with a stainless steel one and to potentially deburr any internal parts that may be rough. I would not typically recommend taking out the feed rails unless you have specific concerns about the parts or the shell stop for the magazine.

Now may also be a good time to seal the wood or refinish the wood and potentially remove the web from the handguard if you want to.

After you have it cleaned and all the gunk out of the gun, replaced the plastic follower with a metal one relube the moving and pivot points on the gun and reassemble.

I do NOT recommend taking the bolt out of the gun for normal cleaning and typical maintenance.
I do not recommend repeated removal and installation of the screws in the action, barrel bands or mag end cap. There have been reports of stripped screws and reports that the barrel bands can be particularly problematic.


Normally, clean the gun from the muzzle like you would a Garand or a M1A. It really doesn't get that dirty in the action during normal operation.

Note I have NOT stripped my 3 Rossi rifles down like this YET. My guns were not gunked up and simple wiping out of the action and barrel cleaned out most if not all of the protectent in the gun. Dry cycling the gun some 1000 times for each weapon replacing the lube two or three times seems to have smoothed out the actions.

I do intend to do the detailed disassembly for these guns but I really only want to go through this operation one time with each gun and I want to take care of any and all modifications, outside of potential sight changes, at that time.
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Re: Cleaning a new Rossi

Post by Archer »

Mag followers:
http://thesmithshop.com/magfollow.html

Rossi 92 - DIY Action Job KIT
https://store.stevesgunz.com/index.php? ... ducts_id=4
Note: Steve's video in the link above covers modifications that go beyond what I consider necessary. Some of these changes have been incorporated in more recent Rossi production. The video is an older production and resolution is not great but it gives detailed take down instructions and at the link above comes with a SS follower and a lighter ejector spring.
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Re: Cleaning a new Rossi

Post by Archer »

BTW,
Check the Sticky at the top of this board for a list of useful threads regarding inspection, disassembly, RE-assembly, and so forth. Feel free to ask additional questions but a lot of items are covered pretty well in that list. Here's that link: https://rossi-rifleman.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2166

Also, the manuals on MOST firearms are IMO pretty darned useless. Outside of listing some sort of ten commandments for gun safety very few long gun manuals cover actual disassembly for the weapon in question. Winchester manuals for the 94/92/86 aren't much if any better than the Rossi version.
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