Does your magazine drop freely with this mod ?Here is what we did to fix the feeding problem. A little piece of plastic glued to the mag. Zero issues since and have put a good number of rounds through it.View attachment 7614622
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Does your magazine drop freely with this mod ?Here is what we did to fix the feeding problem. A little piece of plastic glued to the mag. Zero issues since and have put a good number of rounds through it.View attachment 7614622
No.Hey 357MAX,
Has anyone ever suggested that your spring inside of a spring is some sort of hillbilly fix??
No.Have you ever wondered yourself?
Seriously...................Aren't you the guy that suggested in this thread, on an open forum to mod the stock trigger down to 11oz?Just because it works doesn't mean that it is good judgment!!
No.
No.
Seriously...................Aren't you the guy that suggested in this thread, on an open forum to mod the stock trigger down to 11oz?
I like the ingenuity, but cringed when I read it. How sure are you that that mod will not result in a ND if the gun is dropped?
Most people I know couldn't drill and tap a straight hole if their life depended on it & with a trigger it may well.
Pot - Kettle!
That's not an issue in need of a solution. Buy a 700 trigger of choice and install it.
I know better then to trust my or anyone else's life on a mod like that without first testing the hell out of it. Many do not! There are a lot of talented members on here & a lot that don't know shit from shinola. Keep that in mind when posting stuff that could seriously compromise safety.
Back on topic.
Lighten up Francis, it's a tensioner spring, not a valve spring.
It was posted after 1200rnds, now past 3000 without a single failure to feed or eject. I'm satisfied and wouldn't change a thing I've posted in this thread if I had to start over.
Look at results & then either try it, or don't!
Hillbilly's tend to combine experience with common sense to come up with practical solutions.
The trick is figuring out which ones to trust.
By all means do your own research. The article you linked appears to be a very generalized intro to basic spring design. I'm not downloading it.
A tensioner spring is not a highly stressed critical part. It's just a part of the system & I found mine was not optimized to do it's intended job.
It gets cycled 1 per 5 seconds under match time constraints. Doesn't matter in the least for this application; whether or not the springs are wound in the same direction. It does matter if they could tangle. If the suggested AR take down detent spring is used for the inner, they cant tangle. Most gun enthusiasts have some spare AR detent springs laying around.
I've been way way down the spring rabbit hole for automotive applications & probably forgotten as much as I remember.
There are no springs in any firearm that required to perform at the levels required for an automotive engine. Honestly the technology in the firearms industry lags way behind automotive. Take a really fast full auto like a Kriss Vector @ 1200rpm. Recoil, extractor, & ejector springs are cycling at 20 per second for a whopping 1.5 seconds before the mag is empty. What is spring life expectancy 10,000rnds? If one of them fails does it destroy the gun?
Pictured below are a couple valve springs. left is a Chrome silicone triple spring for an NHRA Pro Stock 500ci. The alloy and heat treat is application driven. These were highly polished. These springs are tested on a Spintron. Frequencies are tuned. Rates are tuned. They're made from certified alloy's. It has 450+lbs seat pressure & 1180+lbs open. It cycles at 90 times per second. Movement range is 1.160". Life expectancy 5-8 quarter mile passes. Or about 5,500 total cycles. Pressures are checked every pass.
In it's current state having developed a little surface rust in my tool box, it would most likely break on the first pass.
On the right is a PSI chrome silicone endurance double valve spring. These go through special heat treating, surface stress relieving & machining processes. +- 210lbs seat & 550lbs open, 73 cycles per second @ .750" movement. Life expectancy 800 laps 1/4 - 1/2 mile dirt oval. Or about 1,250,000 cycles.
A lowly grocery getter valve spring has a lot less pressure, movement range, & an unimpressive cycle rate of 8-42 per second. They however last for 135,000,000+ cycles.
View attachment 7809150
No worries. It wasn't really insulting, actually pretty funny. Wasn't sure if that was intended or you just missed a dose of meds. That's why I busted your balls a little. Dry humor doesn't often convey well in a forum unless you've gotten to know the personalities your dealing with.I'm sorry, I had to stop at Francis..... LoL..... I was complimenting you, not condemning you. I'm afraid you misunderstood
my dry humor with the first few rhetorical questions.
The article that I offered up was in support of your mod. The article I linked was very generalized and basically meant as a quick visual
reference for people. ""The trick is figuring out which ones to trust.""
Offering reference material is the best way for people to decide for themselves.
I agree with you... in your application two right hand springs don't mean a damn thing!
""That approach is best done when you can use one left hand helical spring nested inside of a right hand helical spring. ""
Obviously from your own photo's, it is the optimum design approach. I was in no way criticizing the way you used two
right hand springs. Right hand is the typical wind direction and your just using what you have in hand.
There have been other posts that suggest that they use a #4-40 set screw to mod the trigger. That seems crazy to me since all
that does is shorten the sear engagement to near zero. The spring plunger counter acts the factory torsion spring to lighten the
weight but at the same time allows you to have a generous engagement. Meaning as much sear as you want.
I'm sorry if you felt insulted by my post. That wasn't my intent.
Poly vudoo mags have worked great for me. Very minor modification required. Or the newly developed l3i mag is awesome.On my Bergara build, my intentions were to use a McMillan A5 I had and researched recommendations to use bottom metal with a long latch. I installed Hawkins Precision M5 long latch version only to find out the magazine would not lock in, the latch was too long. I did try a Badger Ordnance M5 bottom metal and the mag would lock but was sitting way to low for the rounds to feed correctly. So I had some .005 shims and it took like 3 shims to lower the Hawkins bottom metal for the latch to lock the mag in place. Then had the issue where the first 5 rds would feed then the magazine would drop/shift and would fail to feed. I then used clear tape to build up the area under the magazine catch to keep the magazine from tilting. I cleaned the chamber and cycled a fully loaded magazine several times and it fed flawlessly with zero lead shavings. But my magazine won’t drop out freely so I’m thinking of trying a mod I saw earlier where he used a piece of plastic glued in front of the feed lips to keep the magazine from tilting which is permanent versus the scotch tape I used would have to be redone. Also I would rather have my bottom metal sitting firmly against the stock inlet and will probably remove the shims and file down the latch. If I added .015” of shims to get the mag to lock then reducing the length of the latch by the same should get me what I need. I’ll just make sure I go slow and not take off too much. View attachment 7797537View attachment 7797538
What mods do you make to vudoo mags?Poly vudoo mags have worked great for me. Very minor modification required. Or the newly developed l3i mag is awesome.
See post #98/100What mods do you make to vudoo mags?
I had to VERY mildly file the tops of the feed lips for mine to work flawlessly.What mods do you make to vudoo mags?
Yep just received my L3I 14 rd mag, snug fit in the Hawkins mag well, no tilting whatsoever and all 14 rds fed reliablyPoly vudoo mags have worked great for me. Very minor modification required. Or the newly developed l3i mag is awesome.
I got to thinking about this as I was posting about my experience over at RimfireCentral (giving you due credit by the way!).If I had an 18 oz. soup can and put it on my desk 10 inches from the edge, it would requires a certain amount of force to move it.
So lets take out trigger scale and pull it so that it is 5 inches from the edge. For fun, lets call it 12.5 ounces... cool, we have a base line.
Lets move it again, 2.5 inches from the edge. 12.5 ounces ?? Don't we need the same force each time to move the can??
I don't see that changing the amount of sear engagement alone will lighten the trigger. The factory say's 36 ounces is the
low limit. Some people claim below 16 ounces with the #4-40 mod. Show me how and PLEASE use SMALL words.
My own opinion. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it does break, call Bergara. There's not a single thing in this thread I would do except maybe shim magazines if I had issues with a non-Bergara stock. Maybe this thread so be retitled "How to fuck up a perfectly fine firearm." LOL. Right now I'm at 13,174 rounds fired with no issues.When using wall anchors, I run through the full cycle, the only difference being that I'm feeding them by hand and not using the mag - though to be honest I think they might feed if I don't try to load too many in the mag! I use them primarily for dry fire, and after one or two strikes and/or extracts the rim is effectively done so I trash them at that point.
LOL - After all this I feel I'm back to square one - is a stronger spring, or your suggestion of doubling the left side arm the best solution to fixing a failure to extract an unfired round?
I hear ya! So far no problems with mine but I'm only at 80 rounds. A lot of B14R owners seem to swap out the triggers. The triggers I run on my other guns are lighter than Bergara's lowest advertised pull weight so when I saw the trigger mod I figured it might be worth the minimal effort and cost. I'm fine - so far - with the factory trigger if only because it's a bit lighter than Bergara says it should be, which coincidentally is about where my other triggers are! I have no intention of sending it back to Bergara to fix the light trigger! If/when I tire of the factory trigger I'll swap in the one I modified and see how it works.My own opinion. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
As a non-engineer, but somebody who likes to know how stuff works, I find this all very interesting. I might be fun to tip a glass or two together some time and chat - I've got a lot of questions and so far you've been very patient with me (and others!).In the spring plunger trigger mod, the factory trigger spring collapse's the 4.5 pound plunger nose completely. The trigger is
positioned when it contacts the plunger body. ( Just like a set screw )
If I could retitle this thread it would be: "Read this if you don't have any gun smithing (or mechanical, engineering, or machining) background want to learn how your B14R works."I suppose for you, this thread could be retitled: Don't read if your a narrow minded person that has few mechanical skills! LoL
You don't know anything about me. Your attempt to disparage me as a means to make yourself appear intelligent tells me everything about you.My own opinion....
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I suppose for you, this thread could be retitled: Don't read if your a narrow minded person that has few mechanical skills! LoL
If I want a relatively heavier trigger pull ( i.e. 15ounces compared to your 11ounces), how do I achieve that?Any reference material is meant for whoever feels they can glean something from it. You never know what has value until
you look into it.
My first few jobs were in manufacturing so it's normal for me to use nearly all of the tools in the shop. Welding; Oxy, Stick ,
MIG, TIG, Plasma and Carbon Arc. Most of the machine tools except CNC and a lot of metal forming tools.
Still, I do everything I can do to hold their hands and walk them through any issue. The existing hole is about .110 and all they need do
is open it up to .117 max. The existing hole diameter is stepped a few thousandths of an inch about halfway in, if not for that they could
just tap the factory hole. Put a pin punch in the hole and you can feel the small lip.
The Machinist Handbook allows for a drill hole diameter of .109" to .117" due to the 3 times diameter engagement. ( 3D ) of the #6-32 thread.
If they start with most any tap except for a bottom tap, it is virtually self-aligning.
If they blow the task, they haven't lost much. They can buy a Jewel for $200.00 It's a long, heavy, creepy POS from the factory.
Ya know.... I rock climb, scuba dive and hang-glide among other things and I'm expected to know my own limitations. I would hope
that people are honest enough with themselves to know if they should be doing things. Though I'm a big believer of pushing
yourself beyond your comfort zone. The most dangerous thing I do by far is rock climb. That is because my life is in the hands
of my climbing partner when I'm climbing and when I'm coming down. When flying, I have a parachute on my belly ready to deploy.
I suspect you mean trigger blade and not shoe. I don't have one on my B14R but I do have steel ACE trigger shoes on a lot of my other guns.
During a bump test, the added mass of the shoe would work against me If the gun were dropped on it's butt plate. The added
mass inside of the trigger that you're talking about would hurt you if the gun were dropped on it's muzzle. How high are we going
to drop them from?? When is my gun ever going to be six feet off the ground?
Using the #6-32, 4.5 pound plunger, the factory torsion spring should have it completely over powered and never experience
any bounce when dropped. The nose is fully compressed, and the plunger body is acting as the sear stop. My gun has an #8-32
plunger that exerts 7.5 pounds of force but to use it, you have to understand how to use the other factory springs in concert to
balance the system out properly.
My trigger weight is about 8 ounces and not 11. The #6-32 is simply drill, tap, install, adjust sear to your liking. More or less sear
with the #6-32 won't change the weight beyond the theoretical. My estimation is that I have .023" inch engagement based on
thread pitch and trigger ratio. That is screw in until dry fire and then out by 110*
The family friend and neighbor, the hillbilly was asked over 40 years ago if he could give me the circumference of something.
He pulled out something he called a Smart Stick. A Tinners rule. If you measure the diameter, it will give you the approximate
circumference of the object. Thats fine if you live in that kind of world. I never did. **** Note the 27" line
and below it you will see 84.8". 27" times 3.14159 is 84.82" It gets you close.....
Do I have an advantage because of years in the shop and 28 in mechanical design? Sure I do....
Everything I ever designed or checked, I fabricated, machined and assembled in my head prior to release.
Would I trust my fellow co-workers to drill and tap a hole? Hell no!! I'm shocked at how stupid most of them are.
COMAU was the largest automotive tooling supplier in north America. They had a thousand designers and
engineers at one point.
It's 04:13 and time for sleep.... I hope.
If I want a relatively heavier trigger pull ( i.e. 15ounces compared to your 11ounces), how do I achieve that?
Should I buy a lighter spring plunger? such as the #8-32 0.7 -2.3lbs
btw, it's kinda ridiculous that I cant find any similar long nose spring plungers for sale here in Australia
Thanks
Lots of interesting content in this thread.
The BR14 is close to being a really great rifle but certainly reliability needs to be improved.
In a straight up side by side accuracy test, we found the B14 was surprisingly more accurate at 100 yards than two Vudoos a RimX an Anshutzt 54 and a CZ452. Not by much mind you but it won the overall consistently.
As for reliability however it was the worst of the lot. Well next to RimX (Which also has a fatal reliability flaw)
That ejector post on the B14R behind the mag well caught brass and prevented forward bolt motion. At the manufacturer level this is an easy fix, but not so easy for the end user. If the bolt throw was shorter, the gap could be reduced to less than the width of a piece of 22 brass, or the ejector could be made longer to the rear to close out the gap.
The worst was when a live round would get jammed on the left side of the action and wedged into place in the lug way by moving the bolt forward. That gap needs to be either filled in or cleared away so a round will not hang up in there.
As for feed issues, we did make improvements using tape, but the most notable improvement we made was the addition of a jack screw on top of the rear dead part of the mag. That screw was used to control how high up the mag could be pressed.
In our case the B14R was fitted in an MPA chassis so we could control the mag latch, but the balance could only be achieved by trapping the mag between the jack screw on top and the latch on the bottom. Without the jack screw the mag is subject to too much vertical movement to feed reliably.
It did run with both Bergara and Vudoo plastic mags with this modification.
Due to the above, the rifle was replaced by a Vudoo V22 primarily for the reliability, but also for a longer and heavier barrel to improve balance for PRS style shooting.
I wonder if I'm also the only person you ever threatened. That was a threat right? Isn't that why you edited it out. You wrote that I "came dangerously close to calling you stupid." I wonder why you wrote dangerously. Are you going track me down and kill me?To my mind, this entire thread, this entire forum is a place for people to get together and talk about issues. concerns
and solutions, etc.
When I read a problem, I try and give people my best advice along with information to support my
position. Because I said so doesn't work with adults. I welcome and expect people to question my data. They should!
In post #131 I said that I would look into getting getting documentation on Friction. I added it to my simple explanation.
My simplified explanation does nothing to make me appear smart, it is for people that have trouble with math. I don't
subscribe to baffling people with BS. I sincerely want them to be able to make an informed decision.
The documentation doesn't make me look intelligent either.... It belongs to someone else. My greatest input
was to find the simplest version of it for general consumption.
100 pounds on a 10 x 10 plate has 1 pound per square in load. 100 pounds on a 10 x 5 plate has 2 pound per square inch load.
So friction is independent of surface area. Then I find the best, clearest, simplest information on the internet that I can
to support my example. All of my sketches, posts and searching on the net takes time and effort on my part.
It is all done in the hopes of helping other people make the best decision possible.
You'll have to forgive me, it was late and I missed this detail at 1:30 this morning....
You said...."There's not a single thing in this thread I would do except maybe shim magazines"
That virtually translates into, all of the information in this thread is stupid and has no merit whatsoever!!
That implies all of the contributors are stupid.
But you think that shimming your mag with tape is the appropriate resolution to the FTF problem.
I don't have any FTF problems but If I did my solution would be well thought out and executed. I don't expect you to
understand the sketches below, not bc your stupid but because they are crude and only one view.
There is a wave spring washer. The button has an angled slot in it that pushes the button in or out of the mag well
when the set screw is rotated.
The button has a slot in it to prevent it from rotating. The set screw is a 1/4-20 and has a pitch of .050"
1"/ 20=.050".... divide that by 360* = .000138889. If you rotate the set screw by 45* the button will move by .00625"
It's a cute sketch.... It cant really work as is bc it cant be machined or assembled. Only the function is solid.
The second one is a module approach and that would ease many machining and assembly problems.
It's still requires too much work.....
The third and likely the best is the spring plunger. It's angle would allow for easy machining of the tapped hole directly
into the stock.
The plunger nose would just push out of the way during mag insertion.
1/4-20 #3126A26 or one like it. (4 options) OR better still is the M6 8281A25... it has 6 nose force options and an Acetal nose.
I'm surprised that you expected everyone to stay silent and give you a perfunctory smile because you included an LOL in your
assertion that we are all ignorant brainless fools? LOL is often inserted so the poster has a way out of her comment.
Just kidding LoL !!
Since you seem to feel we are off track, why don't you straighten us out with some of your wisdom. Contribute
to this thread and forum in a positive way so that we may see our shortcomings and correct them.
When people know better, they do better. Don't be a an un mensch, help us out wont you?
Your welcome to start with me and my idiotic notions about friction and surface area. What was I thinking?
Anyone can stand back and criticize and add nothing positive to the conversation.
btw... your the only person that I have called out on their ""opinion.""
Signed
Shawn Drivel Carroll
Not an issue to report exactly . . .
I haven't had any trouble or complaints with my trigger, but I did some modifications to another identical trigger and decided to remove the original and do some testing on the modified one. Much longer report on the modifications and testing when I've got it working.
But in the meantime, I read somewhere about somebody flushing their new Jewel trigger and getting some production chips and gunk out of it so first I flushed my modified trigger (Mineral Spirits) and got a BUNCH of chips out of it - no doubt most from the drilling and taping.
Today I flushed the original and washed a few metal chips out of it too. Enough that I deem it a worthwhile exercise - likely worth all of the 25 cents worth of Mineral Spirits. I'm not expecting any improvement (or degradation) in operation, but imagine that clearing out any junk might keep parts from grinding and may preserve if not extend the life of the trigger.
Not an issue to report exactly . . .
I haven't had any trouble or complaints with my trigger, but I did some modifications to another identical trigger and decided to remove the original and do some testing on the modified one. Much longer report on the modifications and testing when I've got it working.
But in the meantime, I read somewhere about somebody flushing their new Jewel trigger and getting some production chips and gunk out of it so first I flushed my modified trigger (Mineral Spirits) and got a BUNCH of chips out of it - no doubt most from the drilling and taping.
Today I flushed the original and washed a few metal chips out of it too. Enough that I deem it a worthwhile exercise - likely worth all of the 25 cents worth of Mineral Spirits. I'm not expecting any improvement (or degradation) in operation, but imagine that clearing out any junk might keep parts from grinding and may preserve if not extend the life of the trigger.