I recently acquired an Anschutz 525 semi-auto 22. When I got it home I wiped it down and confirmed that things cycled reasonably by hand, threw a brush and patch down the bore, and took it out to let it do it's thing (which it did just fine). I got it home and thought that I should tear it down and clean it out. Well - I'm both glad I did - and I'm kicking myself. In short - it was FILTHY inside - full of sand and grit - like this from under the hammer spring in the fire control group:
Thankfully the bore looks to be in good shape. I suspect that in the past, "cleaning" meant a patch down the bore and not much else.
Anyway - I got things pretty well cleaned out and now I'm having an issue putting the thing back together. In short - the spring that drives the bolt back forward is a very long, floppy, spring. It has a little nub insert on the end that seats in the back of the bolt - and a pin about 1" long that goes in the other end of the spring and seats in the back of the receiver.
The openings in the receiver are too small for me to get my fingers in there to hold the spring flat while I compress it by pushing the bolt back towards the back of the receiver. I've found exactly one youtube video on this family of guns and when they come to this part of the reassembly the guy says something like: "this is tricky - but you'll figure it out..." Apparently he's an optimist - because I spent a good hour fighting with this thing and other than some raw finger tips I got 'nothin... I've tried a variety of different implements to pin the middle of the spring to the top of the receiver while sliding the bolt back in on its rails but before I get the bolt back to the point where the spring would be compressed onto the pin - I have to pull my tool out and the spring goes haywire.
Pointers? Thoughts? Links to videos that deal with a similar situation on different guns that might give me some divine inspiration? I'm going to try some other stuff tonight - but I'd really appreciate any pointers.
