Thursday, March 17, 2011

Walther LG55 Overhaul Part 1

Guy emailed me the other day. No, not just some "guy", a guy named Guy. He'd done some horse-trading and acquired a Walther LG55. It was shooting on the low side of 300 fps and was hoping I could have a look.

I met him at a local gun show and brought it home. The metal work and wood are in exceptional shape for their age. I'm inspired now to do some clean up on my 55's stock.

This is from around 1955? Are you kidding me? It's really a beautiful gun.

A light weight barrel sleeve was present--but no threaded collar at the muzzle. This one is retained by the front sight and a set screw (missing) just in front of the breech block.

The checkering is still sharp. Feels like it was cut last week.

There's a crack at the front of the left side forend. Can't see it in this pic.



Started by removing the front sight.

And the sleeve slid right off. The set screw threads are damaged in the sleeve. I think they were M6 x 1.0 mm. I'll have to tap it to a slightly larger size.

Removed the diopter sight next.

I looked in my parts box and found a suitable rubber eye cup for the aperture.

Pretty sure this is period correct.



The front trigger guard screw came out next... (There's no need to remove the rear screw--it anchors the trigger guard to the stock.)

Followed by the forend stock screws.

The action lifts out of the stock.



Unscrewed the knurled end cap. There's a spacer underneath that puts pressure on the trigger assembly and hold it in location.

Looked at the anti-beartrap...

and lifted the cocking lever out of the piston. There's no cocking shoe on this gun.

With the cocking lever out of the way, the anti-beartrap plate is pivoted to the side...

and removed. Note the correct orientation.

Put the action in the medieval spring compressor. Needed a dowel to reach into the compression tube to bear against the guide.

A 9mm wrench unscrews the retaining bolt.

The block. It has a slot in the side for the anti-beartrap plate to pass through.

So, the retaining bolt threads into the spring guide. Interesting.

At least I thought it was interesting just how short the guide is. Most spring guns today have a guide three times as long.

More to come.

3 comments:

Chuck said...

FYI there were some of these imported by, IIRC SOG, and they were $50.00 or so. They were used by the Egyptian army for training rifles.I got the one I have about 1980's, don't remember the year. SOG also had Egyptian training rifles that were side lever cocking, 22 cal with rotating breech.
My walther model 55 had a punch mark in the side of the chamber, supposedly to make them in operative..the cylinder had to be stoned out to fix this..
Chuck

Dave Shoup said...

Thank you for this excellent tutorial from the future (2016); there is very little on disassembly and repair for the older LGVs online and this is awesome.

Dave said...

I have one of these rifles in the UK, it's pretty much like your photos except the stock is walnut Tyrolean. The anti-beartrap assembly was missing the hook to pull the lever, it was replaced with a cut-down hairgrip soldered onto the leg. Inside the cylinder, there is something inside the port end that looks like a wing nut. It may be something to unlock the jaw block end of the cylinder as probably the block was machined separately to the cylinder.
There is a piston seal mod available that is thin enough to sit on the piston end and the seal is formed with an O ring.
Apart from all that it still shoots sweetly and is more accurate than me despite its age.