Seeking a Beretta gunsmith

[justmax]

Sent email

 

[benenglish]

Sent email

I know. See my post below.

 

[benenglish]

OK, I pulled the pistol from storage and looked over it carefully and can add a bunch of additional information. This thing has me shaking my head. When I was much younger and more trusting, I found it for a good price as a gun show was closing and didn't look at it carefully enough. I know better these days.

Anyway...

Do you see any rub or scuff marks on the barrel?
Picture if you do.
Stainless or carbon steel?

It's carbon.

Yes, there are rub/scuff marks on the barrel. Note the difference between the two sides. Here's the right side of the barrel. The scuffing is barely noticeable. Only the light scuff mark halfway down the barrel is obvious.

Now here's the left side. Note the much more prominent scuffs midway down the barrel and at the chamber.

In order to inspect this, I had to tip up the barrel, obviously. Look at the position of the swinging lever in that right-side picture. It's not up against the slide. It should be.

Just to make sure I'm not crazy, I found some YouTube videos about the pistol and compared the operation of those pistols to mine. To tip up the barrel on an undamaged pistol, all that's required is to swing that lever forward 180 degrees so it points straight ahead. The barrel will pop up at that point.

Not on my pistol. After swinging the lever all the way forward, nothing happens. When I try again by returning the lever to the original position, I can't. It hits something and stops at the angle shown, a few degrees down from being in contact with the slide. I can press it fairly hard but it won't move.

Then, only when I release pressure on the lever, the barrel pops up. That whole procedure just ain't right.

As I inspected further, I saw this at the pin on which the barrel pivots:

See the ring of marred finish around that pin? That looks to me like someone has used a tool to remove it in the past and managed to mar the finish on the frame at the same time.

For the record, the other side looks like this:

It doesn't look so bad until you look back at the exploded parts diagram so helpfully provided by Lead Belly, above. See what's wrong about it? The pin has been inserted from right to left, the opposite of the way shown on the parts diagram.

Looking at other guns on YouTube shows me that mine is the opposite of normal. A shout out here to our own CavCop; your video made this easy to see.

However, I did find one video of a pistol with the pin oriented the same as on mine. I also noted that the exact shape of the pin heads and fasteners varied between samples. So maybe the direction of the pin means nothing.

The way it and the frame are marred, though, has me convinced that someone has had this pistol completely apart in the past. That's often not a good thing.

Now for what may be my most important observation. I tried to get a picture of this but the days when I had copy stands and macro lenses to photograph perfectly registered components are long gone. IOW, I couldn't get a picture of this.

With the naked eye, when you look carefully down the barrel from the chamber end while it's in the raised position, it's clear that the barrel is NOT parallel to the pistol frame. The barrel is angled a very small amount to the left. It should not be that way but that certainly explains why there are prominent scuff marks on one side of the barrel and not on the other.

I want to sell this gun but I can't, in good conscience, let anyone have it in this condition. I'm going to call Beretta and see what they recommend. If they blow me off, I'll call Briley. I have a monthly appointment just a couple of blocks from them, anyway, so a trip to their shop is not out of the way at all.

Thanks to all for your input. Further thoughts and discussion would be welcome. I promise to post updates as I figure out what to do with this piece.

 

[Lead Belly]

Hopefully just pin 71 bent and not the hinge. If'n ya feel like it: remove pin, replace with drill rod of same size (smooth part of drill bit end without flutes), then check alignment.

Sorry Ben- just can't help myself. Thanks for pics. LOVE that model pistola or any tippy.

 

[justmax]

OK, I pulled the pistol from storage and looked over it carefully and can add a bunch of additional information. This thing has me shaking my head. When I was much younger and more trusting, I found it for a good price as a gun show was closing and didn't look at it carefully enough. I know better these days.

Anyway...

It's carbon.

Yes, there are rub/scuff marks on the barrel. Note the difference between the two sides. Here's the right side of the barrel. The scuffing is barely noticeable. Only the light scuff mark halfway down the barrel is obvious.

View attachment 429189

Now here's the left side. Note the much more prominent scuffs midway down the barrel and at the chamber.

View attachment 429188

In order to inspect this, I had to tip up the barrel, obviously. Look at the position of the swinging lever in that right-side picture. It's not up against the slide. It should be.

Just to make sure I'm not crazy, I found some YouTube videos about the pistol and compared the operation of those pistols to mine. To tip up the barrel on an undamaged pistol, all that's required is to swing that lever forward 180 degrees so it points straight ahead. The barrel will pop up at that point.

Not on my pistol. After swinging the lever all the way forward, nothing happens. When I try again by returning the lever to the original position, I can't. It hits something and stops at the angle shown, a few degrees down from being in contact with the slide. I can press it fairly hard but it won't move.

Then, only when I release pressure on the lever, the barrel pops up. That whole procedure just ain't right.

As I inspected further, I saw this at the pin on which the barrel pivots:

View attachment 429192

See the ring of marred finish around that pin? That looks to me like someone has used a tool to remove it in the past and managed to mar the finish on the frame at the same time.

For the record, the other side looks like this:

View attachment 429193

It doesn't look so bad until you look back at the exploded parts diagram so helpfully provided by Lead Belly, above. See what's wrong about it? The pin has been inserted from right to left, the opposite of the way shown on the parts diagram.

Looking at other guns on YouTube shows me that mine is the opposite of normal. A shout out here to our own CavCop; your video made this easy to see.

However, I did find one video of a pistol with the pin oriented the same as on mine. I also noted that the exact shape of the pin heads and fasteners varied between samples. So maybe the direction of the pin means nothing.

The way it and the frame are marred, though, has me convinced that someone has had this pistol completely apart in the past. That's often not a good thing.

Now for what may be my most important observation. I tried to get a picture of this but the days when I had copy stands and macro lenses to photograph perfectly registered components are long gone. IOW, I couldn't get a picture of this.

With the naked eye, when you look carefully down the barrel from the chamber end while it's in the raised position, it's clear that the barrel is NOT parallel to the pistol frame. The barrel is angled a very small amount to the left. It should not be that way but that certainly explains why there are prominent scuff marks on one side of the barrel and not on the other.

I want to sell this gun but I can't, in good conscience, let anyone have it in this condition. I'm going to call Beretta and see what they recommend. If they blow me off, I'll call Briley. I have a monthly appointment just a couple of blocks from them, anyway, so a trip to their shop is not out of the way at all.

Thanks to all for your input. Further thoughts and discussion would be welcome. I promise to post updates as I figure out what to do with this piece.

You’ve been busy I see. I’m following intently.

 

[Gordo]

Some people that work on guns are like...

I was setting up at a gun show last year about this time, and a guy was wailing on an AR with a ball peen hammer.
When he finally got what ever pin into that poor thing, he grabbed a spry can of black paint, went outside, and sprayed it in the parking lot.
He probably got a lot of cars at the same time...

 

[Darqhelmet]

Beretta Gallery is in highland park up in Dallas. They have a gunsmith and have been very easy to work with over the years. Being a company store I would assume they can help you.

 

[benenglish]

I'm going to call Beretta...

I guess I need to do this after SHOT. There was a bit of a queue on their customer service line. I really should have anticipated that.

 

[benenglish]

I did call and have a fairly long conversation with Beretta customer service this week. Joe was a joy talk to and very knowledgeable even though he really couldn't help.

Takeaways -

• BeretteUSA can't help with service. This model was discontinued long before BerettaUSA existed as a business entity.
• Find a gunsmith who has worked with Berettas a great deal for a long time. He was blunt about "You're going to need to find an old gunsmith."
• He agreed with my assessment that it appears the pistol was dropped, hard, while the barrel was up.
• On the bright side if the Cheetahs were designed the same as the current tip-ups (well, with the same priorities) then the possibility of the barrel lug or frame being bent or twisted is less than the chance that the crosspin is bent. He said that the current designs are deliberately set up so that the crosspin will fail first, sacrificing itself to save the barrel lug and frame.
• Joe hit some of his go-to sources for parts but couldn't find the pin. I'll keep looking.

I'm pondering my next move. Suggestions are always welcome.

 

[smittyb]

I can’t believe @shipwreck hasn’t chimed in yet.
Surely he knows the local Beretta smiths.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

Well, his last post was ~6 weeks ago.

 

[1911'S 4 Me]

Talk to Lohman's in Spring near you @ Hardy & 2920

 

[Glenn B]

When you hit the control to pop up the barrel, it doesn't want to. Sometimes it does but not usually. It's also a little reticent to be closed. There's some odd resistance at the very end.

It's not a cleaning issue; I've taken care of that.

It feels like something is bent just a bit out of tolerance. It's going to take someone with more measuring tools and mechanical aptitude than me to figure out if something's seriously wrong or just a little wrong. I know these guns have gotten incredibly expensive but I'm not willing to sink the cost of the pistol into getting it fixed. Thus, I need someone who can diagnose the problem. That ain't me.

Just my personal preference, if one of my Beretta pistols was out of whack, I'd send it to Beretta to fix. They have done good by me in the past but that was only once or twice. My Beretta pistols usually do not have problems. They fixed them for free too. Don't know what their policy is now because mine with problems were years ago.

 

[smittyb]

Just my personal preference, if one of my Beretta pistols was out of whack, I'd send it to Beretta to fix. They have done good by me in the past but that was only once or twice. My Beretta pistols usually do not have problems. They fixed them for free too. Don't know what their policy is now because mine with problems were years ago.

I did call and have a fairly long conversation with Beretta customer service this week. Joe was a joy talk to and very knowledgeable even though he really couldn't help.

Takeaways -

• BeretteUSA can't help with service. This model was discontinued long before BerettaUSA existed as a business entity.