Remmington 11-87

I do a lot of mechanic work, but occasionally I get something different in the shop.  I recently had the opportunity to do a little gun smith work.

A customer brought in an old  Remmington 11-87.  This is a standard gas operated semi auto shotgun.  This one is a little bit more interesting because it is an uncommon left hand model.

The magazine tube is brazed or silver soldered in to the frame.  Some how this connection had come loose.  On this gun the magazine tube holds the whole fore arm together and without it the gun is useless.  The owner had tried to solder it back together with regular lead plumbing type solder but it did not hold.

I took the gun entirely apart and cleaned the mating surfaces up with a small stone in my Dremel tool.  Once it was cleaned and fluxed I fired up my torch and used some silver solder that I normally use for high pressure connections on refrigeration equipment.  It is hard to see in the video, but the metal has to be heated up until it just starts to glow.

The metal was a little discolored from the heat, but you can hardly notice with all the rust on this gun.  The owner was very happy to have it fixed in time for the spring time migration.

Shop Tip

Occasionally I need to change a leaking shaft seal on a vehicle or engine.  Normally this is a simple job to pry the old seal out and press a new one in.  The job is a little harder if it is on something that is not disassembled all the way.  With the shaft still in place there is no way to pry the seal out.

A method that I use is to drive two sheet metal screws into the face of the seal.  This gives you something to grab onto or pry on.  If there is room a small carpenter type claw hammer works great to pull on the screw heads.

I have to give credit to Dave R for showing me this years ago when working on our race car.

C.O.

Body Rivet Tool

New ATV's have a lot of plastic body work.  To do any work on these newer machines you need to remove a lot of body panels. Most of the panels are held together with push in plastic rivets. In the past I would have to use the tip of a small screw driver to pry them up and then grab the edge with a pair of needle nose pliers.  This was time consuming and often chewed up the head of the rivet.

I ground special notches into the tips of these pliers to grab the edges of the rivets.  With this tool I can grab the thin edge of the rivet and pull it out all in one motion.  It is much quicker, easier and does not mar the head of the rivet.