What's the bottom of the barrel feet, the spot in the frame the head of the guide rod sits, and the back of your slide spring tunnel look like, that's pretty intense. In the first Pic it looks like the link is hitting the back of the rod, it has a slight chamfer but not enough.

 

Here’s what I have for barrel and slide photos at the moment - I’m new to diagnosing this sort of thing, but when I saw the GR I expected the link or barrel to show something as drastic as the GR.

 

Almost looks like someone put a pair of vice grips on it.

 

Crossed my mind that it got mangled outside the gun and then slipped back in when they pawned/consigned it….

 

Other marks farther up the rod.

 

Nothing that looks like the end - no scoring, burrs, or nicks. Just a couple of shiny spots (symmetrical on both sides) that look like they’re from manufacturing or finishing.

 

If the shop was any bit reputable and honest they would give you an explanation.... try seeing if they knew anything about it.... that looks like it was done by someone or something.... the barrel and rod look like a shark got to it but the slide looks to be un touched

 

I think @philk is on to something. Perhaps the previous owner had a hard time learning how to disassemble a gun with a FLGR and resorted to violence.

 

Hard to tell but it looks like the top "ears" of the rod plate have beat the top rear of the slide's spring tunnel. I can imagine what the frame looks like where the rod seats. I'm curious how the rod plate go so mangled up. Hopefully the frame seat for the guide rod isn't chewed up because that's not a good area to be tore up.

That's a 2piece rod isn’t it? Locked up and put in a vice to break loose. I can see the marks on both sides but how they carried over to the top I don't know unless I can’t see marks on the bottom.

 

Frame looks like normal SA mil-spec (machining marks), but not damaged that I can tell.

 

Definitely won’t hurt to ask - I expect to get the “pawn shop salute” (🤷‍♂️), but you never know.
In the meantime, I have a factory barrel/bushing/GI guide rod from the same era Springfield. Checking to see if that fits/cycles would be a start. I don’t even want to rack the slide again with this abomination inside!
(It locked back and passed safety checks when I picked it up)

 

I wonder what would happen if someone managed to assemble the gun with the guide rod twisted, maybe forced it together, maybe even, God forbid, fired it that way. Do those marks match up with the beat-up barrel feet?

 

It can only go in one way, it may be able to very slightly clock but the frame doesn't have enough room for it to fit any other way.

 

Looks like a little embedding from the rails down some but not bad as much as I can blow it up. Your lower lugs are making full contact on the frame VIS though, the cutter used to relieve it was too small in diameter. It will work as long as there's only upper contact with the other barrel but you don't want to relieve the lower lugs much over a proper cut to produce a bowtie under the barrel bed. Frame and slide look workable thankfully.

 

Thanks - now that I read your assessment and look at my own photos, I see what didn’t seem obvious while handling the frame.

To answer your earlier question, this isn’t a two-piece guide rod. First I’ve dealt with, but just the rod, plug with hole, and bushing.

 

Really, no hole for an allen wrench. In your very first pic if you look left of the barrel there's a perfect line that looks the joint of a 2 piece and you can pick it up again in the second pic, but I can't see it in the last ones.... that's a perfect scratch to suggest a 2 piece. Now I'm curious how someone fubarred that up and the reason.

You didn't buy this in FL from someone that works in a paver plant did you? I work with some special people that have broken everything except AR500 steel and air, and it won't surprise me when they pull that off.

 

There’s no such thing as idiot-proof, as there are many enhanced levels of idiot. I have known some… and BEEN some.

Here are ALL of the recoil spring parts - could someone have gotten frustrated with the missing piece, discarded it, and fired away?

 

Threw it in before they pawned it

 

jrlj, possible but why is it mangled?

ExCondor, hehe. All the parts are there, think this is one of those deals that will forever be a mystery. Good thing is they didn't destroy the frame and slide.

 

I think someone (like one of the posters here) believed it to be a two piece guide rod and clamped it in a vice to take it apart. Soon realizing that was not the case but the vice teeth had already done some cosmetic damage. I personally would just toss it in the garbage and source a standard GI guide rod and plug.

A new spring wouldn't hurt either. That one looks cut to me.

 

That looks like repeated damage from sloppy top-end reassembly with the link misaligned, and my guess would be that the base of the guide rod is probably slightly undersized (or was at one point ) allowing extra movement / tolerance for misalignment, at least that’s typically been the cause of similar damage I’ve seen.

When attempting to re-assemble a top end with a FLGR as a complete unit, if the link is to the rear (which it will often naturally want to do if you don’t hold the spring / FLGR in place, it can get slightly misaligned with the frame / spring channel:

These photographs are obviously exaggerated / taken under artificial conditions (not under spring tension in the second photograph because I don’t want matching wear on my own $hit ), but if the FLGR is misaligned, you’ve got two choices really… actually fix the problem and re-align the FLGR, or just manhandle it and repeatedly slam the slide back and forth until it jams itself into the correct position and the slide finally slides home.

Because most recoil guide rods are typically softer than the slide and frame, your guide rod’s base can start to get pretty mangled without much wear actually showing on the slide or frame—the guide rod will just continue to take the brunt of the damage (unintentionally peening it until it fits properly within the channel ).

This looks like the work of someone who regularly removed and reassembled the top end without worrying too much about the link location and would just slide the top end on, slam it back and forth a couple of times until the guide rod found the right position and slid back and this was probably their normal reassembly process—probably didn’t even have to do it too hard, probably just one or two slams each time over a period of years, and over time the softer guide rod getting pinched between the slide and frame would get pretty ugly, if it has been a one-time thing you’d probably see more evidence on the slide and frame, which is why I say this was probably “normal” for the guy.

Chances are they rarely actually removed the guide rod / took the slide fully down, so the damage would be much less noticeable when the complete top end was together, especially if he wasn’t taking much time to look at the link / worry about the link position.

~Augee

 

Thanks for the explanation - the photos really helped me understand how that could happen. This GR seems more solid than the MIM parts I’ve encountered in other SA pistols, but I’m sure it’s not “slide hard.” (Makes me wonder if MIM would have fractured rather than peening).

Appreciate the reply!

 

Seriously ham-fisted Bubba 'square peg in round hole reassembly' would be my bet.
File that guiderod in the circular file. Go GI or fit a fresh full length GR in it.

 

Great opportunity to lose that

 

True - I’ll start with the low-cost stuff and work my way up to the barrel.

 

I may have been born, but I wasn't born yesterday......There is no way that guide rod head is that damaged from re assembly and not displaying corresponding damage to the frame/slide. I don't care how much harder the metal is, something would show. I don't see anything like that to the frame/slide or the finish of either to explain it. That degree of buggering happened out of the pistol.....Id bet lunch on it. Not on re assembly, not shooting with a light spring, not because you ate at Taco Bell.........

 

The photographs of that part of the frame are not great, but there are two bright spots on the underside of the slide right where a misaligned guide rod could / would have jammed up. 🤷‍♂️

Ultimately I didn’t say that was or was not the cause, only that that’s what it looked like based on similar damage I’ve seen to guide rods, but I’ve got no dog in the fight about what did or did not cause it, merely offering a possible suggestion.

~Augee

 

Edit, this is to M-Peltier's post.

^^^^ I'll second that. There is minor damage in the frame and maybe a little in the slide but hard to tell by the pic. That rod head is massively chewed up on the top and side, nothing can do that in the gun.

 

Thanks, gentlemen, for zooming in and thinking through this. I’ll try to get a better shot of the frame area in question. My next steps seem clear (GR, spring, plug, barrel, and probably SS), but this conversation is a good “real world” example of what problems look like up close. For a non-machinist like me, this helps illustrate the drawings in sources like Kuynhausen.

 

You have a good plan. I'm computer stupid so I can't indicate things in tour pics so...

On the frame where the GR sits you can see some imprinting from the frame rails about 1/2 way down that I can see. In the slide Pic that's upside down if you look at the rear of the slide tunnel down in there, which would be where the top of the GR ears hit corresponding to the frame rail imprint, it looks like contact. An old Springfield it wouldn't surprise me after seing the VIS. When you replace the barrel, not knowing your experience fitting barrels, pay attention to this area because the present fit isn't good. Old Springfield? You're getting good contact now but it goes clean to the bottom of the barrel lugs, too much stress. Where that 1/2 assed circular cut was made all contact should be above that. Both my old Springers hit high but at the bottom too so it was an easy relief without cutting a true "bowtie".

 

I'll just echo what M-Peltier said.....There is no way that damage occurred "IN" the gun without corresponding damage someplace else ! Wherever that might be................My bet is vice or vice grips on the end of the guide rod.
TR

 

pretty obvious to me..someone put the that GR in a vice.. no way use could've chewed up the edges of the GR that way.. you can see the impressions made from the vice jaw "teeth", at least I can, even with my old eyes...just as Peltier posted.

 

Could just be the pic but those locking lugs look just as bad as the guide rod

 

I took a quick pass at the frame and slide with CLP, brush, and q-tips this evening. I see the same things you’re looking at in the pictures, but I don’t see/feel them up close - poor lighting, a little grime, and an old cellphone camera may be playing tricks here. Attempted to get better lighting and angles on the areas that have been mentioned so far, but haven’t got any better images to share yet.

I’ve decided this isn’t the right time to experiment with barrel fitting. Too many unknowns with this one. I’ll get a first- hand professional opinion in the near future from a local ‘smith. (Not sure this is worth the shipping costs to send out for work).

 

Bubba dun'na gud job on dat one

 

No doubt. I think the bones will be fine, but this will end up as either a “sleeper” with a good trigger and fit barrel under a beat-up finish… or at worst a serviceable frame for a .22 conversion.

“Good judgement come from experience… and most experience comes from poor judgement.”