My L1A3 restoration project

[Stray]

I mentioned how I was going to start a L1a3 project in another Thread. This is said project.

Although I have done quite a bit of work on the tube so far I've decided to make a step by step in different posts. The main reason for doing this is that if I put all the pics in the same post it will be way too long for most people to read before they lose interest, and there will be way too much going on in the post. Instead I'll just make a post for each step, and update as if I was starting the project today.

So Lets get started.

I picked up this launcher tube and as you can see it was pretty mangled up as it was used as a drill tube.


Problems with it Included:
-rear cap assembly with it but broken from being used as a shoulder rest.
-Front cap and sling missing
-mechanism cut behind rear sight protector so that the tube was no longer connected to it (demilled?).
- front sight protector broken off from the firing mechanism so it rattled around freely.
- the spring steel piece that kept the front sight protector pressed up was exposed and through rough handling of the tube, made a hole through rubber break down button.
-drill written on tube.

Extra parts to work with:
One aluminium tube,track, sight protector and firing pin off of a newer generation Canadian tube that I bought a few years ago. Unfortunately the newer gen ones have longer tracks and rear sight protectors, along with a few other differences.

more pics of the project:


Next post will be the breakdown of the tube to begin the restoration.

 

[spotter]

look forward to seeing this Stray did one myself a few years ago when you could get them easily over here .

 

[Stray]

First step Was to completely disassemble the tube, First thing I did was, removed the rubber buttons by carefully slicing the silicone that held them there.
This allowed me to see the trigger assembly and verify that there wasn't any damage to safety or trigger.

Now I started scraping at the epoxy that held the trigger assembly to the tube with a razor blade and in 2 hours had managed to remove about 1.5 cm of epoxy.
I obviously realized that this method wasn't going to do, so I went looking for a faster method, and of all places the answer came from a corvette site.

So Tip that I learned was the best way to separate two pieces of fibreglass that are epoxied together is to use a heat gun and scraper. You carefully heat the tube until the epoxy softens to the point that the scraper will easily separate the 2 pieces. Only thing to watch out for is excessive heat and getting too close to any stickers which will curl.

Some pictures:


Next time will be rebuilding of the "track" that connects the 2 tubes together by modifying the new one to fit the tube.

 

[Stray]

The next part was the toughest as it involved the cutting and reshaping of the track. I practised the removal of the track from the back end/ sight protector by using the old broken one. The tracks are press fit and riveted into place.
First thing was to Remove the tracks from the tubes which was a simple sanding down of the rivets and then banging them out of the tube releasing the track/hood assembly. Next drill the rivets on the underside of the sight protector as cleanly as possible then using a soft object (I used a piece of wood) carefully bang the track out of the sight protector.
The removed tracks (with springs still present):

As you can see the tracks are actually the same just the new one is longer and the firing pin is drilled further up. This simplified the modification. just to give you an idea how standardised they are, you can see a line going across the longer one that indicates where the firing pin would be drilled for the pin that holds the spring if it were the older model. I cut it down then using the cut firing pin reshaped the new length.

Cut down:



Showing the standardizing of the tracks;


more to follow.