What's up with this Colt Challenger

[J20DB]

So a friend of the family has this old Colt Challenger that he'd like to sell, and he asked me if I could photograph it and help him find a buyer. It's in excellent shape for its age - the finish is nice, everything fits tightly, and it's accurate, too. The only problem is that it has a tendency to not extract brass from the chamber half the time. I take a look at the gun, and here's what I see:



The groove that the extractor fits into when the slide is forward is milled into both the barrel (inner ring) and the frame, and the two grooves don't line up! However, all the machining marks seem to align, and the front sight is perfectly vertical... it seems like they milled the two parts wrong at the factory and continued to put the pistol together anyways.

The slide does close all the way, but the misalignment seems to keep the extractor from hooking behind the rim enough for reliable extraction.

Has anybody seen this before? Any ideas how this might be remedied?

(By the way, there are a few more photos of the gun at http://jbphotography.smugmug.com/Oth...9958208_mx7Bgd - if anybody has any idea what it might be worth, I'd be very appreciative to hear it )

[trob]

Make the slot bigger.


If it were me, I'd just remove the misaligned part of the slot. It doesn't look like it would take much.

[swifty]

Make the slot bigger.

Agreed.

The barrel might not be indexed correctly, but that is a different topic.

[redcliff]

Is the front sight leaning to the right when viewed from behind?

[trob]

Is the front sight leaning to the right when viewed from behind?

he said it's not

[dfletcher]

I'd clean up the top edge of the barrel liner, make it even with the cut in the barrel shroud. It looks like the the extractor may be clipping it, that edge looks peened or as though struck - the bottom edges of each cut look clean, so perhaps the extractor sits "high" when entering the cuts?

Also, I'd clean the heck out of the cut. The pistol has a few miles on it, it's amazing how much dried, caked up burnt powder can collect there. Good news is the area is easy to access for repair or cleaning.

Also, check the extractor for wear and ensure its spring is full strength, working properly.

Seems like a pretty straighforward correction to make.

[bohoki]

mines the same way leave that alone clean the chamber really good with some 1000 grit wet dry on a cleaning brush and take a close look at the extractor making sure it is springy

also what ammo are you using ?

cci seems to just make guns work when they have trouble with bulk ammo

a little advice if you ammo you are using when you experience problems comes in a big pile try a different ammo before blaming the gun