doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Replacing cocking cams

I forgot to mention the gun could also be off face due to a worn top cross bolt where by the gun is not locking up tight enough to force those pins to move the cocking dogs and rods back into place as William mentioned

Hotrack

From what the dealer just told me, they noticed the problem because the gun was not consistently striking snap caps. Unfortunately, I was not able to speak with their gunsmith, only the salesman who was not in a position to offer much information.

The price on this gun is good but not that good - it sounds like this could be more of a red flag than I am willing to tolerate. Thanks all for your input.

After all this guessing, including mine, nobody , even knows what the complaint is, including the dealer. If the hammers are not cocking, it could be the cocking mechanism. So far, nobody seems to know if the hammers are cocking or not. If you want the gun, I'd insist they fix it first(if they know how). The first step in fixing a problem is determining what the complaint is. Deciding how to best fix it comes next. Best wishes with your decision.

Jim is correct, without knowing exactly what the problem is we are all shooting in the dark, there is however a small clue in the dealers description of the problem "it is not consistently striking the snap caps" the thing to do from here is t ascertain if it strikes every time but some strikes are weak or if it strikes sometimes and not at all others. this will narrow it down a bit but still leave a number of possibilities.

A comment from an English Gun Maker who retired here in this country sums it up well "I hate the bloody things, you fix one problem and that opens up another, and another and so on I would prefer not to work on Them"

Hotrack

I was finally able to talk to the gunsmith and get some better information. Apparently, the cocking cams don't always engage the tumbler, causing the firing pins to stick against the primers when the action is opened. The gunsmith's initial assessment was that someone had previously worked on the cocking cams and had not done a quality job.

He did go on to say however that the top lever was slighly left of center and that there was some small but perceptible movement in the barrels when the fore-end was removed. He said he would not call it "off-face", but it was close. The dealer is going to repair the cocking cams and make a more detailed assessment of the gun's condition.

Sorry for causing a lot of speculation. The gun is 50+ years old and is set up like a pigeon gun (30" barrels, tight chokes, 7.5 lbs), which would suggest the possibility of high-volume shooting.

Well from what little I know about Beretta SOs, this is probably a gun you want to think hard about purchasing. I cannot imagine how an SO with the crossbolt can have barrels be loose. There must be enough wear where the crossbolt meets the barrel lugs to require the lugs to be rebuilt. Or someone mucked with gun at one time caused a problem with the barrel fitting.

Make sure you get all the questions answered after the repair (eg., what did they actually did, where is the top lever, etc.)

I would find another gun. It definitely takes some analysis to fix all the aspects of the system that could be causing this degree of "wear." As prior posters have noted, it could be simple or it could be a simple fix gone metastic. It is hard to undue damage like this on those guns. I doubt that most gunsmiths would be willing to venture a guess as to the extent of the work needed--each fix needs to be made, the gun shot, and the results evaluated. I have been part of this process on a higher end Beretta. You would have to love this particular gun to take on the potential problems. And, we are probably talking a heck of a lot of shooting to cause what has been described.