A neighbor of mine recently acquired a pre-owned BLR 81 in . 308. It's in very nice shape but what I find ~concerning~ is that when the action is worked, it makes a very noticeable grinding noise, almost like that of a zipper going up and down. I have a BLR Lightweight in 7mm-08 and the action on mine is very quiet and smooth. Any thoughts?
I would hose out everything I could reach in the action, chamber, and gears with non-chlorinated brake cleaner. Scrub everything in sight with an old toothbrush, including the teeth along the bottom of the bolt. Hope this helps. Good luck!
Most likely dirt in the rack on the bottom of the bolt. Keep that clean! You don't want it to jump a notch. Browning service wants $$ to reset it. My former gunsmith (he actually lived back to back to me; too handy!) had a slow sales spell so decided to try resetting the rack and pinion himself. It took the better part of 2 days and Go and No-go chamber plug gauges, but he got it. It was one of those things that became a matter of pride and stubbornness.
So my neighbor recently passed away and he thought enough of me to leave me several guns from his collection, including the BLR. Now that I've had a few minutes to spend with it alone, I have determined that the problem is that when the action is worked, the hammer is not being pushed all the way to the rear-most position. This is causing the rack on the bottom of the bolt to contact/rub against the hammer and make the "zipper" sound. When this happens it's also difficult to close the lever/bolt as the bolt is binding on the hammer. If I pull the hammer back manually, it will lock in the rear-most position and the gun works as it should. It doesn't appear the gun has been cleaned in quite a while (it's dirty) so I'm going to start with a good cleaning and light oiling of the hammer mechanism from the underside and see what happens.
