How many rounds have your SVT-40's seen "by you" and had any breakages?

Looks pretty good so far, some of he new CZ 858/Vz-58's can't even go a few thousand without breaking, these guns have been through hell and back and can still seem to run several thousand without issue.

Keep the comments coming guys, this is very interesting.
 
im ^probably around 400 round maybe a little bit more , get one time the sticky brass in the chamber but that was a the second time i shoot it soo i may have some cosmoline there , i had still cleaned the rifle before i shoot it but cosmo is hard to remove some time , mine run fine with the Russian surplus at 1.1 , if you still fear a big failure you can always buy a second svt for the parts , shotted mine 2week ago at -25 and was perfect shooted 80 round
 
milsurpo said:
Snoopycda: I start out on the lowest setting with all of mine and increase until I get reliable functioning and no more. I have about 250 rounds through one rifle with excellent reliability including at minus 20C. Right now I'm most concerned about accuracy issues! As to the ultra-slow mo movies, I suspect a lot of rifles would show surprising things if filmed in a similar manner. I'd love to see an SMLE filmed like that.
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Thanks for your reply.
Machines are not supposed to have personalities, but i guess they all do to some extent. So each rifle will have its own preference?
What kind of accuracy will we expect? 2" or minute of paper plate? Barn door or side of barn?
 
snoopycda said:
Just out of curiuosity (I purchsed one for my son for Christmas) what gas setting would you use in a cold climate setting? Why? We will be firing surplus of course.
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Bring a 8mm wrench and 5.5mm socket with an extension for a bit of grip or bring a socket driver with you to the range if you don't have the gas adjustment tool. The 8mm is to loosen the nut on the inside of the gas system. Once you've loosen that, the 5.5mm socket will easily turn the gas adjuster without stripping it. Each SVT I've seen are different with what setting they like to run at. Set it to its lowest gas setting and work your way up. If it fails on 1.1, then move up to 1.2 and so on. My SVT functions flawlessly on 1.2 in cold climate (-3 is what's considered cold around here) using 148gr SCDS non-corrosive ammo.
 
Wel as usual, reading these fourms reignite my love for a rifle I sometimes forget. My svt has a very low round count. Maybe 200 that I fired when I first got to make sure all was good. I just realized that my gas setting is on 1.5, that seems high to me. Maybe I reinstalled the gas plug to high after cleaning. None the less on dec 26 when I head out to the farm for Christmas you can bet the svt will be coming along.
 
Mumbles Marble Mouth said:
Some are worse than others. Minute of paper plate is to be expected.
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Minute of propane tank at 160 yards is fairly consistent with mine ;). BTW thanks for mentioning the 8mm wrench. I picked one up and wasn't completely sure of the size.

Mine cycled at 1.1 w 203gr. but would do better at 1.2. That was before jacket weather though.
 
A little over 300 rounds through mine . Magazine spring was in backwards when I got it. causing failure to feed issues till I discovered it.
One stovepipe from dirty chamber, extractor ripped half the rim off of the shell! It will put 5 rounds in under 2" at 75yards. I'm sure it will
do better once scoped I can barely see the target at that distance. This rifle totally impresses and everyone who shoots it ends up laughing out loud
Cause its such a blast! (Literally)
I was going to get an sks but after shooting the two side by side I bought two more svt-40s!
 
I find that to be hogwash that an SVT will get 2" at 75 yards.

Here are some of my targets with my SVT using 185gr MFS non-corrosive.

50 meters 1.5" 5 shots. 4 hit. Where the #### did the 5th shot go? The top 3 hits are from my Mosin Nagant. Check out how much it hates the 185gr ammo. I now run only surplus though my Mosin and its almost on par with my Lee Enfield with 1" or better at 50 meters.





100 meters, 5 shots, 3"? The one hit way in the corner was from my Mosin hitting the wrong target because of that 185gr MFS. 2 shots are missing. The 3 that are there are pretty good however.





100 meters, 5 shots, Just over 4". Where is the 5th shot?



The definition of accuracy is consistency and the SVT is far from consistent. At best, Its unpredictable. Other shooters who think the SVT is accurate probably made those same groups but then disregard the missing shots as fliers. I have made some pretty amazing shots with the SVT at long ranges but wasn't able to repeat the same shot even well aiming in the same spot. If you were to bed the rifle to its stock, Yea ok, 3" at 100 meters would be a pretty good expectation. My Lee Enfields both get 1.5" - 2" groups at 100 meters and there is no way in hell an SVT is going to get close to or do better than a Lee Enfield.
 
Mumbles: I'm having similar experiences although I've only managed to get a lot of range time in on one of my SVT's so far. It's a '42 with a probable field alteration scope notch. I picked this one to test as it has a very tight fit of action in stock and substantial up-pressure at the forend tip (which I assume is by intent?). However, like many of these, the bore is only fair. Session #1 with iron sights I got a best 5 shot group of 5.0 inches (100m). During this session I noticed the trigger pull was horrific- long and unpredictable letoff and the iron sights aren't suited to my old eyes. Session 2 I installed a replica scope/ mount thinking this would improve things. Wrong- full foot size 5 shot groups with PRVI and MSF. Removed the cleaning rod for fun and groups "shrunk" to about 7" and point of impact changed markedly. Suspicious that the scope (which seems extremely lite) is junk. I plan to repeat the exercise with a genuine SVT scope that I just got. Very disappointing as I have lots of old rifles with poor to fair bores that will do a lot better than this. However, we must remember these are not target rifles. The standard for acceptable dispersion for the No. 4T (acc. to Canadian Military publication) was 5 shots within a 3" by 3" square at 100m! I'll bet someone out there has an SVT that will do that.
 
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I find that my svt doesn't like anything other then 150 gr ammo and surplus ammo works best. Mine had a like new bore and its shoots about 3" groups with surplus. I also found that the gas setting changes the accuracy a little when i ran it slightly undergassed( it slugishly cycles) it opend up the group to 4-6". So maybe try experimenting with that and try using good 150 gr ammo since thats the weight it was designed to use and it might get more acceptable groups


Ive ran a 300-400 round through mine and the only problems have been because of using cheap Chinese stripper clips and aftermarket mags . I now only use the nice Polish stripper clips from corwin arms and they work great, you can really put them down range fast with some practice.
 
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Now you know why the SVT40 wasn't the best platform for a sniper rifle. It is too light for that large caliber round, and flexes too much in the stock for it to have the same accuracy as a bolt action model.
 
milsurpo said:
The standard for acceptable dispersion for the No. 4T (acc. to Canadian Military publication) was 5 shots within a 3" by 3" square at 100m! I'll bet someone out there has an SVT that will do that.
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That would be maximum 4.2" and my SVT on rare occasion has very close to that. My Lee Enfields must have a nice minty bore since I can easily get 2" with 5 shots with either rifle. I have no doubt in my mind that there are SVT rifles out there that can achieve exceptional accuracy of 3" groups at 100 meters but anything less than 3" is someone blowing smoke. Now that someone has mentioned it. My SVT-40 did get better groups when I first had it and it was on gas setting 1.5. I changed that gas setting to 1.2 after the first time ever using that rifle and now my groups are out to lunch.

The SVT is nonetheless, a cool rifle and even if the one I have now gets at best 5" groups with 5 shots, I'm still keeping it. The look on everyone's face at the range when that thing goes off is hilarious.
 
To clarify I have had two 2" or under 5 shot groups at 75yards with 203gr mfs sp.
all other groups done with the rifle were 4" - 7"ish with mostly 174gr mfs solid core (150rnds)
The two best groups where at the end of a 95 rd session the gun was definitely warm
the gun seems tight only running reliably at 1. 7 with 174gr and 1.5 with the 203gr.
 
This is sort of a side note to my original question but curious if anyone else has a canted front sight on their SVT-40?. I just bought a hand select and it's front sight is fairly canted to the right which is disappointing because the rest of the rifle is very nice.

Figures eh, just can't seem to win.
 
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Tyockell18 said:
This is sort of a side note to my original question but curious if anyone else has a canted front sight on their SVT-40?. I just bought a hand select and it's front sight is fairly canted to the right which is disappointing because the rest of the rifle is very nice.

Figures eh, just can't seem to win.
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I'm pretty sure the front sight base is threaded on so you could possibly fix that fairly easily.
 
Are you sure it's the post that's crooked ? I thought mine was offset to the left but it turns out the muzzle brake
is out of index with sight and the upper hand guard bulges to the right making the sight look crooked.
But it shoots very well. Some say impossibly well :)
 
WFO said:
Are you sure it's the post that's crooked ? I thought mine was offset to the left but it turns out the muzzle brake
is out of index with sight and the upper hand guard bulges to the right making the sight look crooked.
But it shoots very well. Some say impossibly well :)
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It appears to be so yes, a few degrees to the right unfortunately. I'm going to take her to the range soon and find out if she will shoot straight. If it does then all is forgiven, if not I'm going to be less than happy because she is beautiful otherwise.

I'm very fussy unfortunately.
 
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