Category: DIY

[FIXED] Browning BL-22 Bolt Fault

the inside of the action of a browning bl22 rifle.
The inside of the action of a browning bl22 rifle. The insert can be seen in the “roof” of the action.

It is the second time that I have to fix this issue where the trigger fails to release the hammer.

Symptom: The lever is not closing completely and then you cannot pull the trigger.
Cause: There is a small piece of steel in the “roof” of the action that has come loose and slides forward.
Fix: Fix the steel insert in its place, now with a much stronger adhesive. I used Loctite 648 this time.

Okay, first you need to make everything super clean and free of grease. Then you sand the slot with some fine sanding paper first as another cleaning step and then you use a coarser sanding paper to roughen up the surface.

looking inside the action housing of the browning, you can now see a thoroughly cleaned out slot where the insert goes into.
Look at how nice and clean that has become 🙂

Next, clean the insert thoroughly and use fine sanding paper first, then coarser paper.

this is the insert of the browning rifle that has come loose. when it does this, the lever will not close and you cannot pull the trigger.
The cleaned insert.

I chose for a stronger loctite this time, because I want to wait with more intrusive ways to affix this part. Have I noted that this part should never have come out in the first place? It’s not even noted in any parts list…

one can now see two green drops of loctite in the roof of the action housing.
Maybe this grade of Loctite is good enough. If not, then we go back to the drawing board.

There, all fitted together and now I will give it plenty time to dry and cure. Was briefly pondering about heating it up, but that’s a bit of a weird thing to do with glue as you can also often use heat to undo glued together parts.

and everything is now assembled again. the insert is now back in its place and will hopefully stay there
Will it stick?

I’ll go try it out tomorrow with some beefy ammo. I bought CCI EX Stingers that will yeet the nope with 1640 feet per second. If that breaks the glue bond, I’ll have to figure out another way to affix the insert.

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Making a test photo with the DIY Dashcam

Today I learned that the following command creates a test capture with the raspberry pi camera:

libcamera-still -o test.jpg
A screencapture of the output of the camera test command
The output from the command
A dark image with a window visible. Some daylight shines through the window.
We have an image!

And by golly, it works! So yet again some progress has been made. Somewhat worry that it is blurred, so let me make another one with the lights on:

The same as the previous picture, but this time with the lights on and the room is now visible. But it is terribly blurry
Oh no, this is way too blurry

Well heck. That’s not good. I have still not been ably to install python3-picamera3. Would that be the issue? Weird though. Let’s do another test with a mug at 10 cm distance:

a blurry mug can be seen in the center of the image
Well, that doesn’t look good…

One more test then at 20 cm:

Another attempt at 20 cm distance makes yet another blurry photo
20 cm has failed too.

Sooo. Not sure what’s going on here, but at least the camera works. 😀

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Loctite 242 and 222, what’s the difference?

Loctite 222 and 242

In regards to strength, I stick to this rule of thumb:

For something you tighten with a ratchet wrench that is 1/4″ or smaller, you can use Loctite 222.

If the wrench is 1/4″ or 3/4″, Loctite 242 is suitable.

To add to the confusion; If your ratchet wrench is 1/4″, either 222 or 242 will work.

Enjoy getting things intentionally stuck! 🙂

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Fixing an issue with my Browning BL22 (Lever not closing)

Update here: https://3xn.nl/projects/2024/08/01/fixed-browning-bl-22-bolt-fault/

After cleaning out my Browning BL22 and replacing some springs, I experienced an issue with the lever on a regular basis. I took it apart again, checked everything, only to have it re-appear again.

Then I noticed that a small plate in the roof of the rifle’s action housing had come loose. After some investigating, I deduced that this was a part that should not move around. Especially since I discovered that I could visibly see the plate when the issue occurred and by pushing it back, I could resume shooting. Another pointer was, that this particular part does not occur in any parts list.

The correct position of the plate
The plate itself, which does not appear in a parts list.

This is how it looks when the plate has moved then then causes a lockup:

So I decided to use some Loctite 242 to lock the plate in place and now time will have to tell whether this works or not.

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[Projects] DIY Dashcam update

Alright, that was a lot of soldering and it’s not perfect, but I’m not either. So with that done, I have bolted on the PiSugar auxiliary battery and I think it is time to plug in the camera as well. Now I do hope that I find that one github thing back where all the code was!

Back soon with more progress! (I hope)

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Side-project: I’ll just build my own dashcam.

While I am trying to repair the Koonlung K1S Dashcam, I am going to build my own dashcam. Sure, I can buy one and pay a ridiculous amount of money for a half-way decent one, but I paid € 230 for the K1S which I assumed did not turn out to be trash.

And so, I am going to build one myself and learn from it in the process. The project was first going to be a pwnagotchi, but I think building a dashcam is more useful. For now @_@

While I am waiting for the auxiliary battery, I will have to start with soldering the 40-pin header onto the board. And if you wonder why I didn;t buy one with a header soldered on it already, my answer is: “I had no idea that this was an option!!1 D: ”

A box of parts that will become a dashcam at some point. There is a raspberri Pi Zero board, a E-Inkt screen, a clock timer, a camera and some wiring
The box of stuff!

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Trying to fix a Koonlung K1S, a probably long-term project. [plus downloads]

The Koonlung K1S is a very nice dashcam, with GPS, emergency button and HD recording and everything is made quite small. The HD video has a bit of a low bit rate, but it’s still not bad.

That said, it became a piece of rubbish. No matter what kind of SD card is inserted, the software locks up and the whole device becomes useless.

The front side of the Koonlung K1S Dashcam
The Koonlung K1S Dashcam

I have tried all the versions of the firmware [⇓1]. I have tried to decompile the firmware [⇓2][⇓3]. Nothing worked, whatever I tried.

So the time has come to take the thing apart. It cannot be any more broken than it is now, so maybe it is a blown cap or something? It is not, by the first look. There seems to be a corroded button cell soldered onto the motherboard.

The close-up of what looks like a small button-cell battery
Hmmm, is this a corroded button cell?
Probably a corroded button-cell
This seems to be at least a problem.

Alright. So what model is it? It’s not like you can just take it out and read what’s stamped onto it. Luckily I have a reference sheet in my archive that can be helpful. Hooray for being a data hoarder? >_>

The diameter is 4.8mm and the height is 2.0mm. The height is somewhat debatable as everything is small and kinda hard to reach. According to my datasheet, there are two candidates as a replacement battery:

  1. 4.8 x 2.15 – 1.55V – Maxell model: SR421SW – Seiko SB-A6 – Citizen 280-77 – GP 348
  2. 4.8 x 1.65 – 1.55V – Maxell model: SR416SW – Seiko SB-A5 – Citizen 280-75 – GP 337

As I want to get the exact battery, I grabbed a mini caliper and measured 1.65mm. There we go. It will be a SR416SW or anything compatible.

€5,46 has been paid for a set of 10 batteries because it was impossible to buy just one and now it is time to get the battery out.

More progress updates later!

[1] K1S-R158-50417-MPH – K1S-R179-50825 – K1S-R180-KPH – K1S-R180-MPH – K1S-R215-KPH
[2] k1s.bin_hlil – Type: Mapped, Platform: thumb2, Architecture: thumb2
[3] k1s.bin_hlil-arm7 – Type: Mapped, Platform: armv7, Architecture: armv7

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