Please help me get this cool old rifle working again. It's a Pre-64 Marlin Model 60. The high speed video shows the empty case not making it cleanly out of the receiver. What can I do to get this rifle cycling well? Bear in mind, it only cost me $100 to begin with.


Link for phones that don't even Flash.

if it's anything like the one I bought, tear it down and clean it.

This.Probably just needs a very thorough cleaning of the chamber and bolt face.  Probably years of crusted on grime.  People clean the bore and wipe down the exterior surfaces and neglect the chamber and bolt.

For a thorough cleaning here are some instructions with detailed photos.

Detail strip it.  Blow all of the stuff out of the action.  Soak the bolt assembly in solvent.  Look for worn parts.  Separate the barrel from the action and brush out the chamber.  It is more important to clean the chamber than the bore.  The bore should only be cleaned from the breech and never from the muzzle.

60 parts are cheap and easy to obtain if something else is wrong.

I have seen it many times with old and new 60's, it is usually the ejector wire which can be fixed very easy.

Rimfire Central has a great thread on it that explains how to use a nickel to set the distance from the sideplates, as well as the height of the ejector wire.



Pretty much pull your bolt back and if your ejector wire is not riding up tight in the corner of your bolt cut out, then it needs tweaked to get running right again.

I believe the old style parts are no longer made, somewhere along the lines marlin updated the 60 series parts and you might need to get a newer update kit.  

But yeah I would just clean and lube and maybe an mcarbo trigger spring kit (search on rimfirecentral) to get the trigger pull lightened up nice. Then if it's still messing up get new parts.

This!  I had tons of issues with my sons 60 that was made in 1983.  Set the ejector nickle up nickle over.  Also replaced the mainspring in the gun.

I replaced the feed throat,buffer and extractors on my 60.



Also smoothed the bolt a little.



Get a metal pick and work around the barrel.

They like to get a lot of build up.

If we had it here the first thing I would do is clean it up really well. Then I would use 220, 400, and 600 grit sand paper with oil to slick up the sides of the bolt just a bit. Make sure there are no burrs and make sure there are no rough spots in the receiver. Do not go sanding the crap out of the receiver. Just check for rough spots.

90% of ejection issues with .22 rifles is due to sluggish bolt movement. I have seen this work dozens and dozens of times. Rimfirecentral has a great tutorial on the spring work required to do a great trigger job on a model 60. I keep looking for an old beater to buy and fix up just for fun.

Check the Ejector Spring as mentioned above.  Also look and see if you have a 2 peice feed throat.  If you do then you can upgrade the throat lifter and spring for about $50 from Brownells.  I have ordered the parts to update an old model 60 I got.  Will do a write up when they get here and I get it all stripped down.

MAHA