Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles Replacing floor plate latch and pin

The other day I was shooting my old K98 when all the rounds dumped out of the magazine floor plate. Inspecting the floor plate latch I saw it wasn't catching to hold the floor plate securely. It didn't appear that it had a latch spring either. I put the latch back in to see if I could get it to hold the floor plate in and it did for a short time but opened up again. I purchased a kit with a new floor plate latch, spring and floor plate latch pin. However, I've never installed one before. I imagine of course I'll have to take out the lower receiver (magazine and trigger guard) to do it. Since I haven't ever done one before I looked for a youtube video on it but without success. Has anyone here ever replaced those three components before and can offer any advice before I start? Thanks.

i recently rep[lace two for a client, they needed fitting!

I’m not a Mauser hater by any means. I’ve had them since my first center fire. I agree with Jkob regarding fitting. Perhaps there has been a rifle built in as many countries as a Mauser, but I can’t think of any. It seems to me there’s many variations and to build parts that fit them all would seem impossible - maybe a trigger would be the most common, IDK. I would think the parts would be fairly easily found and inexpensive. So if you would like to tinker you would not be out of much cash if you blew it.

Jkob, am I right to assume one needs to remove the lower receiver to replace the plunger, spring and latch pin? Any special tools needed and are there any pitfalls other then fitting? Is the fitting just with filing the latch pin to fit or did the fitting have to deal with the spring? And any issues with installing the latch pin? I ask because this will be the first time I've done this.

"....remove the lower receiver..."? You will need to remove the bottom metal from the stock to get at the pin that holds the spring and plunger in place. The fitting needed to be done to the plunger; I did it with a few different files. A PITA I might add.