Chiappa 9mm M1 Carbine Review
- Thread starter beltfed
- Start date
Shot it for the first time yesterday and even with the heavy trigger it will shoot the bull out at 20 yards and that's the good. As for the bad the mags do make the rounds feed too steep and it would have been better if the mag well had been made for the mag not to seat so vertical. The rifle can be made to feed flawlessly if you reload using round nose bullets at a short OAL and these are the only rounds that worked well. I noticed after a few hundred rounds that the inside of the receiver where the mag lips seat is getting burred up and it was not like that before shooting so even though the mag lips are hardened the steel in the receiver must be fairly soft. I thought about lightly filing them smooth but don't want to remove any metal as it will likely just do this again. I don't think it would hurt to remove metal here as the mag would still be secure.
x2!
Just took mine out of the box, cleaned'r up and tried cycling some snap caps with the promag as well has a couple 92 mags. It was 50/50 whether they would chamber or eject. Many feed on a steep angle and jammed up. Also, many didnt eject from the breach. After cycling a couple dozen mags, the rim of the snap caps are chewed all to hell. I'll get it out to the range and put a few boxes through it to see if it will 'break in', but I'm not exactly hopeful.
I too bought one and the action was very gritty feeling out of the box.
As many have mentioned there are some minor problems with this rifle but I think they can be overcome fairly simply:
a) Bolt not cycling far enough to the rear to pick up next round.
Solution: remove orange buffer from rear of action, the end that is buried in the relief has a substantial cup on the end, trim the buffer @ 3/32" to 1/8"
b) Gritty feeling action.
Solution: clean with ???? solvent and use compressed air to remove debris. Mine had a lot of small black flakes (I assume finish from action) inside the spring. CLP on the band that rides the barrel and recoil guide rod it smoothed right out.
c) 12 lbs. Trigger.
Solution thus far,... I jerry rigged a jig and lightly stoned the sear and polished as much as I felt safe without a test fire before going more. I also trimmed the reset spring @ 1/4 coil. I may lighten the hammer at some point and try different hammer springs. This is all tentative on test fire. trigger is now @ 7lbs.
d) accuracy, almost non existent beyond 75yds. 50 yds. approx. 2.5" to 3" (kinda meh IMO)
When I got home I gave the barrel a thorough scrubbing and there seemed to be a ridiculous amount of grime that just never seemed to end. After a solid hour of scrubbing and patching it came clean. I then had a close look down the barrel and the finish was sub-standard IMO,... 1/2 hr. of fine lapping compound removed the gritty looking surface. Will update on accuracy improvement/degradation after next range trip.
e) The rifle seems to cycle painfully slow compared to other semi autos I have owned.
Looking at the block that rides the barrel there looks to be an abundance of metal for no real apparent reason. I may try some lightening in this area as well. Its a $500. rifle may as well push the limits a bit and learn in the process.
f) barrel heat retention,
Mine has the wood stock so I drilled 3 rows of 3/8" holes the entire length of the hand guard, re stained, looks cool and will surely help with cooling
g) mags, so far all, 2 Berretta, 1 Mecgar, and the one that came with it function perfectly after the buffer mod.
beltfed, thanks for the reviews so far, glad to hear I was not the only one having issues (thought I got another lemon)
As many have mentioned there are some minor problems with this rifle but I think they can be overcome fairly simply:
a) Bolt not cycling far enough to the rear to pick up next round.
Solution: remove orange buffer from rear of action, the end that is buried in the relief has a substantial cup on the end, trim the buffer @ 3/32" to 1/8"
b) Gritty feeling action.
Solution: clean with ???? solvent and use compressed air to remove debris. Mine had a lot of small black flakes (I assume finish from action) inside the spring. CLP on the band that rides the barrel and recoil guide rod it smoothed right out.
c) 12 lbs. Trigger.
Solution thus far,... I jerry rigged a jig and lightly stoned the sear and polished as much as I felt safe without a test fire before going more. I also trimmed the reset spring @ 1/4 coil. I may lighten the hammer at some point and try different hammer springs. This is all tentative on test fire. trigger is now @ 7lbs.
d) accuracy, almost non existent beyond 75yds. 50 yds. approx. 2.5" to 3" (kinda meh IMO)
When I got home I gave the barrel a thorough scrubbing and there seemed to be a ridiculous amount of grime that just never seemed to end. After a solid hour of scrubbing and patching it came clean. I then had a close look down the barrel and the finish was sub-standard IMO,... 1/2 hr. of fine lapping compound removed the gritty looking surface. Will update on accuracy improvement/degradation after next range trip.
e) The rifle seems to cycle painfully slow compared to other semi autos I have owned.
Looking at the block that rides the barrel there looks to be an abundance of metal for no real apparent reason. I may try some lightening in this area as well. Its a $500. rifle may as well push the limits a bit and learn in the process.
f) barrel heat retention,
Mine has the wood stock so I drilled 3 rows of 3/8" holes the entire length of the hand guard, re stained, looks cool and will surely help with cooling
g) mags, so far all, 2 Berretta, 1 Mecgar, and the one that came with it function perfectly after the buffer mod.
beltfed, thanks for the reviews so far, glad to hear I was not the only one having issues (thought I got another lemon)
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FIFY.
To me, it looks like chiappa had an engineer design this thing for 9mm, and say "in theory, like that should run just fine, all the math checks out. Tool up the machines and lets get these babies out the door"
i'll agree with that. a sub 1k non res rifle that takes "tactical" ammo? bound to sell.
I'd like to see what they've changed between their .22 and the 9mm version...
300Spartans
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Do they have a model that comes with a repro "paratrooper" stock?
tried mine today 200 round in total of different brand , and very happy with it , didnt really get any trouble with it , only problem i got were with the blaser aluminum and the last round on one mag that was failing to eject sometime , and that all , rifle work fine , accuracy is not bad , trigger is a little bit hard but i see worst ,
money well spend on my side
money well spend on my side
UPDATE: did another basic field strip, deburred where req'd, used some seal 1 CLP on friction areas, then deburred the rims of my snap caps. Resting the buttstock against a solid surface, I cycled the snap caps some more through the promag that came with the rifle, and the 92 beretta mag. The feed lips on the beretta are much shorted than the promag cause the rounds to climb at a steeper angle, thus jamming in the breach. The provided promag (after dozens and dozens of manual cycles) finally feed and extract nearly flawlessly.
A buddy of mine purchased one as well, and had similar problems plus a couple other little issues. It seems the quality of these firearms range from unusable to great. Seems mine was somewhere in between, but with a little messing around hopefully everyone can get some enjoyable range time with these rifles.
P.S. don't trust the bolt hold open pin, a light bump to the stock can cause it to fail and slam closed on whatever may be in its path. I'm going to see how much the pin can travel and ill drill the pin recess a bit deeper...
I did a complete tear down and it's not fast but not bad. Once you remove the 4 set screws and separate the slide from the ring that rides on the barrel just line up the slide with the notch in the rail it rides in and give it a slight twist, everything comes apart and the recoil spring is not under much pressure. Now you can take out the bolt. I then removed the trigger group by pushing out the roll pin at the front of the trigger group. There was quite a few wear points which I deburred including the lips that the bolt rides on. It's no wonder they say the rifles need a break in period. After smoothing everything up and applying grease to all the wear areas the rifle was noticeably smoother.
Awesome, sounds pretty straight forward. Thanks for the break down!
