Some years back, somebody was asking for advice about rebuilding his Benjamin Sheridan 392 or 397. And I told him that if he had any problems getting it back together, to feel free to call me and I'd try to walk him through it.
Well, apparently, that old post is still out there, and somebody else found it and gave me a call this afternoon, asking for help getting his back together. And that's fine... except it'd been so long since I'd done any work on ours that I'd forgotten exactly what the solution is for that one little quirk these rifles have when you are reassembling them. And quite honestly, I told him wrong. And his phone number didn't show up on our Caller ID, so I couldn't call him back.
So I thought I'd post the correct solution here so in the future when people run into this problem, hopefully they'll find this, and won't waste their time calling me, only to have me tell them wrong!
As I see it, the one real quirk in reassembling these rifles is that when you reattach the trigger assembly to the receiver, the bolt must be forward, but in the *unlocked* position. Otherwise, you won't be able to cock it. And you have to hold it in that unlocked position as you are reassembling it, or it will want to fall into the locked position. See the below photo.
An excellent guide for disassembling and reassembling this gun is:
And while I'm at it, I'll reiterate that the best place to get parts for these is to call Crosman. Every time I've called them to order parts, they've always given me some of the best customer service I've ever had anywhere.
I hope this helps somebody sometime!
Well, apparently, that old post is still out there, and somebody else found it and gave me a call this afternoon, asking for help getting his back together. And that's fine... except it'd been so long since I'd done any work on ours that I'd forgotten exactly what the solution is for that one little quirk these rifles have when you are reassembling them. And quite honestly, I told him wrong. And his phone number didn't show up on our Caller ID, so I couldn't call him back.
So I thought I'd post the correct solution here so in the future when people run into this problem, hopefully they'll find this, and won't waste their time calling me, only to have me tell them wrong!
As I see it, the one real quirk in reassembling these rifles is that when you reattach the trigger assembly to the receiver, the bolt must be forward, but in the *unlocked* position. Otherwise, you won't be able to cock it. And you have to hold it in that unlocked position as you are reassembling it, or it will want to fall into the locked position. See the below photo.
An excellent guide for disassembling and reassembling this gun is:
And while I'm at it, I'll reiterate that the best place to get parts for these is to call Crosman. Every time I've called them to order parts, they've always given me some of the best customer service I've ever had anywhere.
I hope this helps somebody sometime!