Colt Detective Special Cylinder Latch Repair

[Pokem807]

Just finished making a minor repair to my new to me Third Issue DS, and I figured it might help someone else if I mentioned it here.

I noticed that occasionally the cylinder latch would not completely disengage, which meant that the cylinder would not swing out as it should. Upon inspection, it was obvious that as rearward pressure was applied, the rear of the latch was dipping down towards the side plate. This put the latch out of alignment and caused it to hang up before the cylinder was released.

It took some looking on various other forums, but I finally found mention of a nylon spacer used on later model Colts which prevented this wiggle. After removing the stocks, crane/cylinder and side plate, I was able to look at the "back" of the latch and see that there was a piece of nylon which had been shaved almost flush. Fortunately the line used for my weed eater was close to the same diameter (0.090) and after a little fitting I was able to replace the worn nylon spacer and get the latch to work properly again.

I didn't come up with this fix, but it took a while to find reference to it. Hope it helps someone here in the future.