Taurus 85 light strike question.

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adcoch1

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So I picked up a used Taurus 85 2" stainless 38 special a few weeks ago and finally got to shoot it yesterday. It was very accurate with my cast and pc'd wadcutters, but one chamber was not reliably going off in double action. It was working fine in single action. What would cause just one chamber out of five to consistently not fire?

Now for the details:
Cci small pistol primers, mixed case head brass. Never a misfire with just one kind of brass. No idea how much the gun has been fired, but it locks up good and has sharp rifling.
 
Someone may have worked on the trigger pull. I would install a new full power mainspring and then see if it will bang all chambers. CCI primers are pretty hard to pop and even harder if not FULLY seated in the pocket. Try it with Federal loads. I have always replaced all springs in a used Taurus when I get one.
 
These guns came from the factory with amazingly bad DA pulls, so it's common to find them with aftermarket spring kits installed. For whatever reason, that often results in timing and carry up issues, which can sometimes be a little tough to detect. The result is that when manually cocked the cylinder indexes correctly, but DA use sometimes results in the hammer snapping on a previously fired case.

To detect this, make sure the gun is unloaded and then slowly cycle the DA trigger while applying light pressure to the cylinder, to impede its progress. This might have to be done quite a few times. The cylinder should rotate in one direction throughout the trigger cycle. If at any point you feel a distinct "unlocking" and can then turn the cylinder in the wrong direction with your fingers, you will have found the problem.

In one case which I personally witnessed, even that test was not adequate, and the problem was diagnosed by watching the gun during live fire. Every once in a while the cylinder would unlock and turn just slightly "backwards" as a result of recoil. The next cycle of the trigger would then do nothing but return the cylinder to battery with the just-fired case under the hammer!

Unfortunately, the only guaranteed solution I have found is to return the gun to the factory. In some cases the problem can be solved by replacing all of the springs with full power aftermarket parts, but unless things have changed, even the heaviest aftermarket springs are not as strong as OEM parts, so sometimes still fail to solve the trouble.
 
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These guns came from the factory with amazingly bad DA pulls, so it's common to find them with aftermarket spring kits installed. For whatever reason, that often results in timing and carry up issues, which can sometimes be a little tough to detect. The result is that when manually cocked the cylinder indexes correctly, but DA use sometimes results in the hammer snapping on a previously fired case.

To detect this, make sure the gun is unloaded and then slowly cycle the DA trigger while applying light pressure to the cylinder, to impede its progress. This might have to be done quite a few times. The cylinder should rotate in one direction throughout the trigger cycle. If at any point you feel a distinct "unlocking" and can then turn the cylinder in the wrong direction with your fingers, you will have found the problem.

In one case which I personally witnessed, even that test was not adequate, and the problem was diagnosed by watching the gun during live fire. Every once in a while the cylinder would unlock and turn just slightly "backwards" as a result of recoil. The next cycle of the trigger would then do nothing but return the cylinder to battery with the just-fired case under the hammer!

Unfortunately, the only guaranteed solution I have found is to return the gun to the factory. In some cases the problem can be solved by replacing all of the springs with full power aftermarket parts, but unless things have changed, even the heaviest aftermarket springs are not as strong as OEM parts, so sometimes still fail to solve the trouble.
That is an interesting problem. I will keep my eyes open for stuff like that in the future. I know that this problem is a light strike though, it barely dimpled the primer the first time. All other 4 chambers had deep dimpled primers. Did it 5 times in a row on the same chamber.
 
Is it possible that the crane or rod or something is bent causing that particular chamber to be further away from the firing pin?
That would be my guess.
 
I took the entire gun apart tonight and cleaned out all the sludge out of the action. The bolt stop seems to engage better now, hopefully the whole action will work better and the problem will go away. No visible broken or worn parts though.
 
These guns came from the factory with amazingly bad DA pulls, so it's common to find them with aftermarket spring kits installed. For whatever reason, that often results in timing and carry up issues, which can sometimes be a little tough to detect. The result is that when manually cocked the cylinder indexes correctly, but DA use sometimes results in the hammer snapping on a previously fired case.

To detect this, make sure the gun is unloaded and then slowly cycle the DA trigger while applying light pressure to the cylinder, to impede its progress. This might have to be done quite a few times. The cylinder should rotate in one direction throughout the trigger cycle. If at any point you feel a distinct "unlocking" and can then turn the cylinder in the wrong direction with your fingers, you will have found the problem.
The hand that moves the cylinder has a hand spring inside the trigger, thru a hand pin, pushes on the hand that rotate the cylinder, I doubt folks install aftermarket spring for it, likely dirt or dried lube/grease bind the pin and cause problem. I'm not an expert on Taurus 85, I have one, but have not open it yet. Here is a disassembly guide. Now reading this, I probably should open it and give a good cleaning. Mine is a used gun, a police trade in, made in 80s.
https://www.taurusarmed.net/threads/taurus-revolver-disassembly-pictorial-guide.22219/
 
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