Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors Old M-70 won't stay cocked.

I'm posting this here instead of the gunsmithing section because I think I might get more Model 70 experts on this forum.

I have a pre-64 Model 70 Winchester which I had disassembled and then re-assembled. But when I put the bolt back in, it wouldn’t fire!

This rifle cocks on opening, so when you remove the bolt it will be cocked. But when you put it into the receiver, the cocking piece moves forward as you turn the bolt handle down, instead of staying cocked. So when you pull the trigger, nothing happens.

I have another old M70 and when I visually compared the 2 bolts, they looked identical. So I didn’t think it was something I did to the bolt.

However, I also noticed that on the problem rifle, the trigger didn’t move at all when the bolt was out of the rifle. On my other M70, with the bolt removed, if you pulled the trigger it would wiggle about 1/16” back and forth.

I did put a .020” thick piece of plastic on the flat behind the recoil lug, in order to raise up the barrel a bit. I did not put anything in the back. Thinking something might be binding, I backed the rear guard screw off by ½ turn. Bingo!!! The bolt stays cocked, the rifle will fire, and the trigger has that little bit of movement in it.

So now it seems to be OK. But I’d like to know what was going on, and do I have anything to worry about going forward? Old M70 Should I put a piece of plastic under the tang, to make up for the one that is behind the recoil lug?

Can any M-70 experts help?

You answered your own question. You put the trigger in a bind. rather than a shim under the tang, try to make a washer out of the same thickness and put it on the rear guard screw. Whatever you have to do to level it up and get the bind out.

Is the rifle a fwt? I'm assuming so, since he's trying to create a freefloat condition with the barrel. If it is not, pull that piece of plastic out and return it to normal. You are putting the action into a bind and that does nothing except create many issues, as the op is finding out. I was thinking about the model 70 receiver yesterday in regards to this exact thing. They flex, which is detrimental to accuracy. The reason I always glass bed them tight and solid and as stress free as possible. Yesterday I was working with a Tikka and notice the action/receiver is much more rigid and they are less affected by stresses. Probably the reason they shoot better without as much fuss. OP needs to let us know what his intent is with the rifle. Obviously what he did to it by putting it into a bind is causing havoc on the trigger and I guarantee his accuracy went to schidt too...

Yeah good advice. I assumed he was floating it. I used to do that to see if the gun would benefit from floating before doing something (bedding) more permanent.

The rifle is the 'target' model, with a 26" heavy barrel, originally in 243, and I just had it re-barreled to 6mm Remington. The new barrel was supposed to be the same contour as the original, but it turned out to be very slightly bigger (in diameter), and I had to do a bit of scraping on the barrel channel, I put the shim in to see if I wanted to go further and do a glass-bedding job, and free-float the barrel.

I knew you could flex an action, and I was careful about not over-tightening the rear screw (or the center screw), but I never thought you could flex one bad enough to prevent the bolt from staying cocked!!

So last night I put it back to normal with the shim removed, and I'll be testing it as soon as I can.