Interchangeability
Quoting Patocazador:
"All of mine interchange with no problems plus a ClassicBallistx and Howell one.
__________________
Life's short, have some fun.
Bob"
Pato,
Thanks for chiming in.
CBX guarantees fit and function for our cylinders, but our experience is still that we can meet that only about 95% of the time right off the bat and only about 97% of the time given adjustments to the cylinder. Ruger's insistence that its cylinders be fitted was more an insurance liability question than one of function. If they fit and function, they interchange. They may fit differently, but just try measuring the variance precision cylinder-to-cylinder, bore-to-bore between fit of on your ROA and see what you get. Oh, and while you're at it, spring for an air gauge and and optical comparator, because until then, you're just guessing.
Ruger never answered us as to how their process worked, but we suspect that a number of their frames with anomaly dimensions went to their "custom" shop to have cylinders specially fitted to them and some of those were beyond the dimensional range of practical fitting modification of our cylinder. Those are likely the 3% that are our failures.
Yes, to all of you, Ruger's quality control for all its Blackhawk design revolvers, the ROA included, is excellent. The barrels are as good as you can buy.
We find Ruger's standard for timing precision a little wider than ours, but no more than a few minutes +/- of arc angle and unimportant unless you're shooting long range silhouette. Other factors play a much more important role. Most OEM's will fail perfect alignment as tested with a perfect bore diameter gauge. CBX's will, but usually by a lot less arc - it's just that every chamber in every one of CBX's cylinders will be in pretty much exactly the same orientation to barrel bore axis. There is no shot to shot deviation. Profiling the latch can correct this to a limited extent, but as it is very small and inaccessible the process is excruciating, time consuming, and
expensive.
Ruger's election to cut latch slots chordally instead of radially is more tolerant of anomalies of cylinder/latch alignment than ours. That "tight" lockup folks seem to think so great about our cylinder is actually a "tightrope" we walk with every cylinder we make. And the anomalies of the latch itself and its frame cut are much more common than those of OEM frame dimension and axle alignment.
There's more to the story. Read some of it at
classicballistx.com or in this thread. But, I'll bet you've got better things to do, too.
Cheers!
Wisent
Classicballistx
P.S. Prices just went up, but so did the discount we offer. Get in touch and buy yourself a cylinder - we'll make you a happier ROA shooter. Guaranteed!
