Another new to 1894's question. I replaced my mainspring with Brownell's main spring with shims . The literature stated that starting shim set up , two blue will work sometimes , tried that did not work. Then the two whites , plus one red spacer to be sure, should work for sure --- nope ! That set up will only fire 50% of the time ? I like the smoother lighter lever action but not much good if gin does not shoot ? Any one else had thei problem and how did you fix it. I can just go back to the factory spring if all else fails but I like the light smooth lever action ?

Do you have a hammer extension on the gun?

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MikeG

I assume you mean it fired 100 percent(ish) before the mainspring swap. It is possible the two-piece firing pin system is causing enough drag to inhibit ignition. There are replacement one-piece pins available.

The original guns used the single firing pin, but please understand you are defeating a safety feature by removing the two-piece pin. It will be possible to fire the rifle without a locking bolt installed.

Swapping the firing pin was/is pretty common with the cowboy action shooters.

I would remove the current firing pins, and make sure they are free of any roughness or burrs, and clean the firing pin channel squeaky clean before I replaced any parts.

If you do have a hammer spur extension, remove it and try the ignition FIRST.

Andy

Thanks guys , no hammer spurs I do not like those things. I will clean and polish the current firing pin system. With out dis assembling the current system it does seem to function a little sticky. Thanks for the feed back.
As far as safety devices I assume every gun is loaded and teat it so all of the time. If this clean and polish does not fix it up I will look into the solid firing pin. Thanks again, Jim.

Hopefully it's just some crud in the bolt. Good luck.

FYI, I tried a reduced power mainspring in one of my hunting rifles. The first misfire showed me the error of my ways, the full powered factory mainspring went back in.

Hope you get it sorted out.

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MikeG

Thanks again Mike ! My 1894 is an older gun that has seen very little , if any use, So it has sat for a long time some where . So it will get a good scrubbing and see how it works.

It is really more an issue of disassembly/reassembly. If you forget to install the locking bolt when re-assembling your rifle now, the firing pins wont line up and it wont fire. With a solid firing pin, forgetting to install the locking bolt and firing will result in a damaged gun or worse. The lever will probably keep the bolt in the gun and out of your cheek........

As long as the rifle is correctly assembled, the solid firing pin is no less or more safe than the two-piece.

Well Andy new to me gun and I have not disassembled it yet beyond changing the main spring to a Brownells. I hope the locking bolt is not missing that would be a real bad on my day. I am going to pull the bolt tomorrow and check the firing pins and hopefully I have a locking bolt hiding down in there !!
I work on pistols of various type often but just got this carbine recently and have shot it but not disassembled it. Thanks for your comments.

Well pulled the bolt , yes there were locking bolts in there !!, and pulled the firing pin and it was a little cruddy . I cleaned the channel good and then took the firing pin and polished it mirror bright with 1000 grit wet / dry paper and reassembled the bolt and put it back in and then reinstalled the lever after I polished the contact points with 1000 grit also. I then reinstalled the factory main spring and it hits notecabley harder than the reduced spring did. Action functioned good and smooth after the polish but the heavy trigger pull was back. that will be a project for another day . I am going to the range on Wednesday or Thursday and see how it works with the magnum primers and factory main spring. I'll report back but I bet it works ! Jim

I'm glad it is working now, my 1894 would fire reliably with small rifle primers, so they do whack the firing pin pretty well with the stock spring.

You should be able to get a light trigger pull with the stock spring, if you are lazy like me you can buy a Wild West Guns "Happy Trigger". If you are more ambitious, you can do a trigger job or have one done by a gunsmith.

Andy

Lots of 1894 models made. Is it a Winchester, marlin, original, repo, Spanish made, Brazil???

" Marlin 1894 Lever Guns"

Andy trigger job will be a future project , just want it to shoot at this point and time ,and get used to disassembling it .

Put factory hammer spring back in shot 60 rounds of Small pistol magnum and small rifle magnum primers , not one single misfire.
The SRM primers seem to group better than most of the SPM primers did.
I tried 17.2/296/158 bullets. One load with Sierra 158 hollow cavity bullets dotted off a 1 1/4" group at 100 and other bullets shot 2-3" groups. 16.5/AA#9 /140 Remington shot very poor and 15.0/2400/158 WW shot 3-4" groups. All of these loads had shot quite well out of my contender but the rifle seemed to like the 158's the best.
The gun is also pretty cranky on OAL length . One load required a little manipulation with a small screw driver to be able to clear the back end of the magazine tube. The Sierra load also functioned flawless with no attempts to jam or hang up.
Has any one loaded the Hornady 140 flex tip in their gun , care to share accurate loads ?
Also Little gun and Hornady 158XTP ? any one loading that ?
Thanks for helping a newbie along. Jim

Mike G where in Texas ?

Central - just outside of Austin.

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MikeG

about 90 miles south west of you down 16