Any succeed in getting the Taurus Thunderbolt rifle to work?

[smle-man]

I bought a Taurus Thunderbolt Colt Lightning knock off on clearance at Turner's yesterday. It is in .45 Colt. It was an impulse buy and I have been reading up on the rifle and the problems Cowboy Action shooters have with them since then. Looks like I should have done the reseach ahead of time! The problems revolve around feeding and light primer strikes. The most recent comments I can find are from 2007. Don't know if that means that everyone gave up and I just bought the last one of these to be sold, or if the problems finally got solved. Any comments anyone?

[Bukowski]

I've shot a friend's and it worked fine for the 20 or so rounds I put through it. The biggest problems the CAS folks had seemed to appear at "match" speed when cycling the action quickly. The range we were at did not allow rapid fire, so unfortunately I couldn't test the theory.

[14delta]

Howdy Smle-Man
The Taurus Thunderbolt has been a problem gun from day one, Taurus redesigned the original Colt design to make it easier to produce, unfortunatly they also made it harder to work on than an original and near impossible to time, Most of the complaints I've hears were either a round gets under the carrier which is hard to clear or of live rounds being ejected during cycling . I've been a cowboy action shooter for quite a while and I haven't heard of more than a couple guys getting the Thunderbolt to work. I don't know of any cowboy gunsmith that still works on them and the last I heard was that Taurus wasn't even trying to repair them but offering refunds instead.
I have an early AWA lightning that took a few trips to the gunsmiths to get dialed in, I've probably shot it in ten major matchs without a problem, I shoot it faster than any of my lever guns but I can see where the real fast shooters would have a problem getting one to run as fast as a well tuned 73.
Sorry I could'nt give you better new's, If you want a real earfull go over to the SASS wire and ask about it. http://sassnet.com
14delta

[smle-man]

Thanks for the info - I guess if it doesn't work I'll send it to Taurus to get my money back.

[jojosdad]

I've got one that runs pretty well as long as I don't hesitate when I pump it. It took 3 trips to Taurus to get it that way though. Also - it is one of the last ones produced a "Z" prefix on the serial #.
Good luck with it. When it runs right it's a real hoot to shoot, accurate and amazingly fast.

[smle-man]

Mine has an A prefix serial number. Does that mean the first one built or the last one I wonder?

[jojosdad]

My guess is that it's one of the first. I'd do a search on the CAS forums for more info, though

[smle-man]

I'd venture to say that the cartridge itself is a big part of the problem for this firearm. The .45 Colt has a pretty skimpy rim and is a big fat round to feed out of the magazine and into the chamber. The .44-40 or .38-40 would have been a much better choice.

[14delta]

The lightnings all seem to do better with bottleneck cartridges like the 44/40,38/40 and 32/20.
I believe (But not positive) that the A prefix guns were some of the first.
AWA had teething problems when they introduced the first modern lightning copy, Their design worked fine but when they sent it to Italy for production the engineers modified it to speed production not realizing how intricate the timing was, If everything did'nt happen exactly at the right time it would'nt work. It's took about three years for AWA to work out the bugs and have a dependable rifle but their reputation(and lightnings in general) took a giant hit that they still haven't recovered from.
Taurus went a different route they modernized the design using a lot of plastic, Clips and I believe roll pins and they ended up with an action that could'nt be easily tuned, I think they also weren't aware of how critical the timing is on these rifles. A lot of the CAS shooters that bought these did so because of Taurus's lifetime warranty for awhile a bunch of the guys were waiting up to six months for new parts to come from Brazil but when they got their rifles back with the new parts they still would'nt work in most cases. It looks like Taurus has thrown in the towel on this project.
From what I've read on the SASS wire and personal experiance
it looks like the lightnings from best to worst are.
# 1 USFA
# 2 Pedersoli
# 3 AWA
# 4 Beretta and Uberti
# 5 Taurus
Well at least the Taurus doe's look nice, If nothing else it would look good hanging over a fireplace.
14delta

[smle-man]

That will be a $500 wall decoration! If it doesn't work it's going back to Taurus for a refund.

[smle-man]

I brought home the Thunderbolt tonight. I made up 5 dummy rounds with 255 gr lead SWC bullets to function test the rifle. As long as the action is worked with authority it feeds fine. As soon as I did it gently it locked up. It was easily cleared by pushing the round back down (and the lifter) and closing the action. Then, a strong stroke of the action fed and ejected the dummy round.

It goes to the range tomorrow. It looks like a late production rifle because the front sight blade is undercut compared to the semi circle blade that had many complaints registered on the cowboy action shooting forums. The serial number prefix is A; the rifles with the complaints have Z so I bet Taurus started with Z and then moved to A for the later rifles.

[smle-man]

It works just fine! Put 60 rounds of smle-man reloads through it with nary a stutter or a bobble. Fed fine, fired fine, ejected fine. Barrel got very hot after the first magazine full through it! Tube holds 13 rounds plus one in the chamber. This isn't a firearm for someone with big stubby fingers though. Getting the rounds into the tube through the loading gate takes some shoving and I ended up using my pinky finger to get the rounds shoved all the way in. Guess the shooters back in the day had smaller hands.

If you want a Thunderbolt and find one with the serial number prefix of AT, buy it!

[14delta]

SM
I think you better go out and buy a lottery ticket.

14delta