M1 gas cylinder cracked

Nothing but guesses as to cause~these things sometimes got worked over pretty good being tapped off for cleaning by harsher-than-a-mallet methods. A usable example if you don't have specific needs for date or maker should run between $50 - $150 from low to high. Your pic looks odd to me--almost like that separation was cut into the metal. Maybe it's just the pic.

Yeah, I don't think that's a crack, that's supposed to be there. If your gc was cracked, you'd know it because the rifle wouldn't cycle right.

What you have is indeed a saw cut gas cylinder.
A "Fix" for a loose, worn, or out of spec gas cylinder to tighten it onto the barrel and prevent changes in sight zero.
A word of caution, do NOT attempt to remove the gas cylinder from the barrel until you first loosen the front sight screw to relieve tension or you will really bugger the barrel gas cylinder splines and probably the gas cylinder. HTH

DavidB2 said:

Mistake on my part. I did remove the barrel gas cylinder. Yesterday when cleaning the rifle; I got cleaning solvent inside the front stock and barrel area. It was eases emit to take the rifle fully apart for cleaning. How can I make sure I haven't damaged the rifle?

Click to expand...

That certainly looks intentional, especially since it aligns with the gap in the front sight. I would check on the CMP forum.

I will confirm on CMP M1 Garand Forum but I believe it was a field modification done during WWII.

Harry

Not a crack. It was purposely done to tighten up a loose gas cylinder.

I doubt you've damaged your rifle--if it doesn't cycle reliably something may be up. If the weapon is running well, I'm of a mind to leave that gas cylinder on until it get so fouled it needs to be cleaned--this can be years if you don't shoot it very often. You won't hurt anything; it's made from a stainless alloy. You can clean the rest of the weapon pretty well and leave it be. The solvent under the wood might smoke a bit when you shoot it. I used to go crazy and break the gas systems down on my M-1's all the time--but the truth is you risk more harm than good by constantly fussing with them. That's a neat mod you've got there--I leaned something new about the M-1.

This was not done because of bad gas cylinders but becuase of the barrel
There was a run of Garand barrels that had undersized gas ports so the gas cylinder fit was loose. Instead of scrapping the barrels the cut modification was done to the gas cylinders so the barrel could be used