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Help.. Do I need a MG34 Lock Lever?


Ryo

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Okay.. I was pulling out my MG34 pistol grip to replace a broken retaining spring for the dust cover... and surprisingly discovered there is 2 parts missing.

I'm missing the Locking Lever (or maybe the trigger sear?) and the spring that pushes it up. However my MG34 seems to function without tissues.. question does it do, and do I need them?
I'm assuming I would want to get replacement parts if possible. I hate having missing parts. I bought this MG34 this way and believe the original owner didn't know about the missing parts. He didn't seem like the person who went deeping into the parts.  I only noticed it because I was studying some videos about the pistol grip and notice they had the part.. and I didn't.

The specific parts I'm talking about is C14 and C15 from this diagram.
MG34GCF1_13_grande.jpg

 

I think I found the part but Sarco called it a MG34 trigger sear. (IMA called it a locking lever)  https://www.sarcoinc.com/mg34-trigger-sear/
If this is the part I need.. then I need to find the spring or toss something that may fit and do the same thing, random guessing the spring tension.

 
Thanks for the help.

Edited by Ryo
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You will also need C16.

I have read that those parts control the rate of fire in the gun. I took them out of my gun when the gun would keep shooting when I let go of the trigger. 100 round test worked perfectly. Test was stopped when ejector plate worked loose again.

BRP has a MG34 trigger vidio. Baum has a MG34 trigger group book.

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I saw a 

7 hours ago, gftiv said:

You will also need C16.

I have read that those parts control the rate of fire in the gun. I took them out of my gun when the gun would keep shooting when I let go of the trigger. 100 round test worked perfectly. Test was stopped when ejector plate worked loose again.

BRP has a MG34 trigger vidio. Baum has a MG34 trigger group book.

Thanks for pointing out C16. I totally forgot about that one. I think I'll just order the parts and install to see what happens. Hopefully I won't have the same issue as yours. Just a note that I read that that if the sear spring is weak, it can cause runaway fire.

I saw a video on Forgotten Weapons on the disassembly and assembly of the trigger group.  Really good video. I think that's the video  you were referring to.

I'll have to look up Baum's book. I saw he had a lot of translated books from German. Maybe I'll contact him to see if I can get a bundle package because I've been interested in many of the books like indirect fire, etc.

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1 hour ago, jkb471 said:

All my stuff is put away right now, so no easy access to look.  Isn't that the charging handle lock?   

You mean C16, from photos I've seen, it is a part that is suppose to pop up above the pistol grip. Not sure if it goes into the channel of the charging handle, but it is close..I would need to pull it out later to see.

The missing part C14 I believe is actually a MG-34 trigger safety catch, strangely/interesting that those part have different names associated with them making it even more confusing what they are.. That C16 I even seen called as a plunger which I don't think it is..

In Folke's book the parts are (pg 91):
C14 is Sperrklinke (translates to pawl)
C15 is Schraubenfeder zur Sperrklinke
C16 is Niederdrūcker (Folke described it as the Sear Catch Knob pg 96)

Sounded like in the book it was suppose to fix a specific situation where there was a stoppage after a failure to eject.. 

Seems like I can find C14 at a lot of places, C15 and C16 not so much.  Need to look around more.

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This must be the video mentioned above.  The parts are shown at 2:25-3:10 in the video,  Referred to as a "transfer bar".  C14, 15 and 16 are an assembly.  My recollection is that C16 does stick up into the track for the charging handle.  

 

  

 

 

 

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Yup that was the video. Transfer bar, and alignment pin. Hard part about finding this part is that different places call the parts different things. I found the transfer bar, but not the alignment pin.

Here are some snapshots of the parts.
When I saw this video.. I knew something was different from my pistol grip. Probably don't need them, but prefer to have all the parts since my grip does accommodate the missing parts.

MG34-Missing-Parts.jpg

 

If anyone has any idea where to get all 3 parts, I would greatly appreciate it.

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  • 3 months later...

You don't need any of those parts: C14 C15 C16. These parts are technically safety parts for a stoppage. The MG34 locks the sear down when you pull the trigger. When you release, the sear will not come up until the bolt strikes the sear release and only on the rearward stroke of the bolt. These pieces will trip the sear release when you pull the charging handle. This is so that if you have a stoppage on a forward stroke, with the bolt at the back, the cocking lever will be used to trip the sear lock and raise the sear. This is grossly overly complicated and tends to make more problems than solutions. Every MG34 I have worked on, runs better with these parts removed. However, a stoppage with bolt at the rear will require you to hold the bolt back with the charging handle,,,,,,,,,,,,or remove the stock and spring to take all the pressure off the bolt.

Good Luck with it

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That was a very good explanation.. now I get it. Out of habit, I always charge the charging handle before opening the top cover to avoid an out of battery occurance when having an issue. The description of that safety in Folke's book was a bit hard to understand.. but now I get it.

I've talked to someone else about the parts and they too don't have these parts. They thought it was for rate reduction but I knew it was for some type of safety. The rate reduction one is a special grip which I've never seen, other than the one in Folke's book.

Thanks for taking the time to explain it.

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Given the frequency of stoppages with MG. 34s, it's madness (and dangerous) to have a gun that will not hold the bolt open so stoppages can be readily cleared.

Replace those parts, and make sure they fit fit and function correctly.

Sometimes one or more of the small tits on the lever are broken off.  If you study this part carefully with the trigger group both on and off the gun (cycle the bolt without the recoil spring installed), you'll figure out how they work and why they are necessary.

The little springs in the trigger group are critical, as they must be short enough to allow full travel in compression yet long enough to extend positively.  They also have to be of proper diameter to compress within their cavities without binding or kinking. Often they are found damaged. Experiment with some of the tiny springs from a Walther PPK to find one that fits (or can be altered).

Incorrect functioning of the sear lock will cause the trigger to stay back and not return. The sear will be depressed and you will have a terrible time trying to clear stoppages --especially if there is a round in the chamber.

M

Edited by MGMike
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Most if not every German MG from post WW I has a sear that is locked down by pulling the trigger. MG15, MG34, MG42..... Only the MG34 has this extra sear release mechanism attached to the charging lever. The MG34 has a much more complicated trigger group than all the rest. The MG34 also has the sear as not part of trigger group but attached independently to the receiver. When you remove the trigger group, you see the sear is pinned to the bottom pf the receiver and it is operated by a lever in the trigger group. In the MG42, this is all inside the trigger group and the 42 has no charging handle trip mechanism because this is an overcomplication and was removed on the simplified MG42. Just like the 34, when you remove the bolt on a MG42 and pull the trigger, you can see the sear is locked down and will not come up until something trips the sear release. Other countries did not adopt this system; DP28, Jap Type 99, BAR......  all have a sear that is directly connected to the trigger and the sear pops up as soon as you release the trigger.

German engineering, ya gotta love it. It works great for doing long burst ammo dumps since it takes almost no effort to hold the trigger down once the sear is released

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That is the reason why the late Blake Stevens labeled it "The Trigger Group from Hell"....

The whole idea was to combine semi-auto and full-auto in a single trigger assembly without a separate selector switch.  It was an early attempt at what we'd call today a progressive trigger, in which the length of pull determines the mode of fire.  Short pull is semi, longer pull is full.   In semi-auto the MG34's trigger's travel is mechanically blocked from going all way back; pulling the lower portion of the trigger for full-auto lifts the block so the assembly can go back further and hold down the disconnector.

In practice it was more complexity and trouble than it was worth. One might imagine that the Germans would have learned this during the interwar period from the MG13, which had substantially the same trigger.  But they didn't, and kept the MG34 trigger group essentially unchanged throughout the war.  They did have enough sense, however, to eliminate another complication, a clockwork rate reducer inside the grip, present in prewar models.

The real reason for the extra sear trip inside the cocking handle rail was to deal with feed stoppages in which bolt halted short of tripping the main release.  Without the extra trip, yanking back the cocking handle to attempt to clear the jam would not release the sear, and the bolt could not be locked open.  That's when you need three hands or a helper (which is about the same time that the bipod buckles and the muzzle drops into the dirt).

Been there, done that, for 50+ years.

M

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  • 2 months later...

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