Brand new Zastava in 9.3x62-feeding issue

ok, I kind of stepped away from this part of my life for a couple of years. Recently I decided to try to get this thing running again as I really like it.

Turns out it was factory ammo loaded too long!!! It fired other ammo just fine, so I was pretty sure it was the ammo.
As I reload, I decided to check it. Each COAL was a few thou too long.

I setup my dies for this caliber, and gently pressed the bullet in a bit farther, a little at a time till I hit maximum length. It was visually shorter than the other couple of boxes of factory ammo.

I went and shot them. First, I just shot one and checked for pressure signs, and there were none, so I put 3 in the magazine. They all shot fine, and I checked those ejected cases again ,and they were good. I shot that whole box and it cycled just fine, and with 3 other people plus me shooting it with not even one feeding failure. Well no failures at all but it was the feed jams that I was working on.

I went home and set all the rest to match.

I am pretty happy about this tbh, as we all need a win it seems these days
 
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JR Hartman said:
ok, I kind of stepped away from this part of my life for a couple of years. Recently I decided to try to get this thing running again as I really like it.

Turns out it was factory ammo loaded too long!!! It fired other ammo just fine, so I was pretty sure it was the ammo.
As I reload, I decided to check it. Each COAL was a few thou too long.

I setup my dies for this caliber, and gently pressed the bullet in a bit farther, a little at a time till I hit maximum length. It was visually shorter than the other couple of boxes of factory ammo.

I went and shot them. First, I just shot one and checked for pressure signs, and there were none, so I put 3 in the magazine. They all shot fine, and I checked those ejected cases again ,and they were good. I shot that whole box and it cycled just fine, and with 3 other people plus me shooting it with not even one feeding failure. Well no failures at all but it was the feed jams that I was working on.

I went home and set all the rest to match.

I am pretty happy about this tbh, as we all need a win it seems these days
Click to expand...

Right on, glad you found the problem, and the remedy. A fresh look at an old problem = success. What are you going to hunt with it?
 
not 100 percent sure yet TBH. Anything I like I guess, haha :) being that I can reload, I can put whatever pill and powder in it to tailor it to the game.

Mainly I was thinking of maybe being the guy with the bear stopper? If a few of us are out anyway. No scope so its easy to acquire targets, and it has lots of power with Norma Alaska in there.
 
Check the follower (is it rough, does it sit parallel to the action or is it tilted forward/backward on the spring), check the lips on the mag well for burrs, bent metal, etc. , and maybe the metal mag well itself isn’t seated properly against the underside of the action - for instance is it assymetrical, canted to one side, etc. Does it need to be shimmed higher? Hard to say without seeing it feed a round.
 
Not sure any of the following is your issue - but some things to look at, maybe - the "feed lips" on a Mauser 98 are milled into the underside of the receiver rails - if something done wonky there, will not want to feed well.

I also have a couple BSA sporters that are built from WWI M1917 (P17's to some) - similar feed lips on underside of receiver rails - I notice that BSA chose to grind like an hour glass shape into the original feed rails - I read somewhere that originals worked just fine with pointy FMJ 30-06 military cartridges, but was not to BSA liking with round nose hunting cartridges - so the inner faces of the feed rails slightly relieved towards the front to allow the round nose to come up quicker.

I am sure that you realize that the right hand and left hand rounds in a double stack magazine have to BOTH tilt / "pop up", and also have cartridge twist from their side to go to centre - to get into that chamber. I believe those TWO directional changes are directed, or at least allowed, by the feed rails - apparently even tiny burr can impede that function. Not the same as a centre feed magazine at all.

I saw pictures of an example of a "tuned" Mauser 98 - is Phil Shoemaker's guiding rifle in 458 Win Mag. I would guesstimate that with the bolt about 1/3 of the way forward, the round was "popped up" out of the magazine - the rim was behind the extractor and the round was perfectly in line with the chamber - the forward motion of the bolt, from that point, simply fed that cartridge straight in - was no "straightening" the cartridge within the chamber, or messing, for that one to feed.

Has been a while since I saw those pictures - might have been in a book by Finn Aargaard - I do believe the alignment was all done, well before the brass part of the cartridge got to the chamber - I believe the big old 458 bullet had started in there, though.
 
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If you’d like to point it where I have EVER said CRF rifles always feed or don’t have feeding issues I’d appreciate it. Otherwise take your lie somewhere else.
 
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