I've been thinking about this issue with the guides some, and what I did to get my 92 454 Casull to cycle the longer cartridges and wonder why they couldn't have simply done this on the factory floor as part of the assembly process. What I keep coming up with is that it might be more problematic then it seems. First, which cartridge dimension specs would they use in determining which ammo will work? I was reading in the Lyman Cast Bullet manual on the 454 Casull that you couldn't use a bullet sized over .451 or they wouldn't fit in the Freedom Arms revolvers due to tight chamber dimensions. I got to thinking that I was using .452 sized bullets in my dummy rounds which with slightly larger diameters likely could tend to exacerbate the clearance issue of feeding this big longer straight walled round into the chamber, in a gun that wasn't originally designed to use straight walled in the first place. I realize the chamber size of the FA is not the same issue as feeding problem with the Rossi but it did get me thinking. Maybe had I went to the range with a factory loaded jacketed round which bullets would have been sized smaller it would have fed, and I suspect it just might have because of the relatively small amount of actual metal I did remove from the guides.Ranch Dog wrote:I hear what you are saying but they could tightly control two parts and eliminate almost all warranty claims. Those parts are simply the left and right cartridge guides. That is all it would take.
I guess my point is that this design is always going to be a little finicky with straight walled ammo, the tolerances such that we can't fully expect them to feed everything we handload for them without some tweaking in our own basements and garages. Maybe Rossi knows this, and choose not to add an extra hour, or even 15 minutes to the assembly time because of it, but rather try to get it close and move on.. We tend to make comparisons with all our gun purchaces to everything else we buy, how those items, electric drills, toasters, automobiles are expected to function perfectly, then wonder why can't our century + old designed sub $500 model 92's? When someone new to this design like myself shoves in say hand loaded rounds with oversized cast bullets, and then find it doesn't cycle them perfectly, throw up out arms and say that by even thinking about taking a file to the guides is giving Rossi a walk to keep churning out junk might not be the right way to think. I like to instead think of it like if I were going out and buying a new Jeep, with the expectation of it to have the ability to ford rivers and all sorts of other off road activities I would need to make modifications. Or maybe a better comparison would be if someone decided to start making Model T Fords again, not with modern engines and whatnot but real authentic cars, made the way they were originally. Couldn't expect them to work like a new Ford Focus, and nobody in their right mind would. Same with the straight walled chambered Rossi. I expect to get my finger nails dirty in order to make it right, or else pay Chiappa Firearms big bucks (or a gunsmith who knows the 92 issues) to make it right. Perhaps its either that or a complete redesign into something that modern factory machines can build without so much hands on fitting, but then it wouldn't at some point be a Model 1892 anymore.
