Expectations of zastava m85 in 7.62x39

Hitzy: My rifle was also free-floated to the about 2" in front of the action. Normally, this isn't a big deal - back in the day, it wasn't uncommon to bed the first 2" of a barrel past the action and than free float the rest so I think this was done deliberately. I added a washer to the front action bolt under the receiver to free-float the whole barrel.

Canam: Sorry about your rifle that sounds pretty bad. Mine wasn't nearly as bad. My main issue was the inletting. There were some burrs on the bolt (in the right side rail guide) that I polished out. When I took the barrelled action and held it muzzle down, the bolt only caught at the ejector and once past that the bolt fell loosely to the mouth of the chamber and had to be pushed in the rest of the way which I consider to be good as the bolt locks up very tightly on my rifle. Fortunately, I ordered the non-sight model so I don't have any issues with sights being canted. Wood on mine is pretty good - I requested a dark stock and I don't know if there are multiple colours but I am happy with stock colour that I received. I was concerned that the firing pin spring was going to be weak on mine as I had heard that some M85s would not fire Milsurp ammo and on my very first shot - I had a misfire with Norinco non-corrosive ammo. When I cocked the action again it fired the misfired round and about another 30 or so rounds without a single misfire again.

I do have to say that the trigger on the M85 is something different. At first, I thought that it had only adjustment for overtravel, sear engagement and weight with a screw to adjustment to set the safety. That safety screw plus sear engagement really makes adjusting the trigger a PITA. I was able to get the trigger to 2lbs and have it safely #### and not discharge (bump test) but I couldn't get the safety to work without stopping the trigger entirely. The trigger design is pretty sound but more complicated than I think it should be but maybe the Serbian Engineers know something as I haven't heard of a M85 trigger recall whereas Remington has. Looking at the trigger assembly, I think if one were to find some different springs it would be possible to safely get the trigger to below 2lbs with a marginal cost (say $5 in springs).

As a final note - the bore on my example is really very good. The barrel looks very straight with crisp rifling - the metal was finished to a very high level so it should be a shooter...
 
No doubt the sight less version takes care of the possibility of canted sights. I also considered trading it for a non sighted version but at some point I'd like to set it up with a peep on the rear to keep the gun light and handy.
I may just leave the barrel as is and remove the rear sight, install a peep at the back and see how it looks and shoots. If it's not annoying to look at and shoots well I will leave it alone and if the front cant bothers me I may just reshape the base a bit to camouflage the cant and file down the overhanging drifted front sight blade.
We will see.
 
Too bad you don't have access to a barrel and action wrench, it would look better if you could just loosen the barrel. It is pretty unlikely that moving the barrel back enough to straighten out the sights would result in an unsafe headspace situation. Even with a scope and weaver bases, my M85 is very light and handy. I am pretty confident that when I sort out the stock inletting that this is going to be a shooter but I am not willing to bet the house on my hypothesis! The main reason I wanted one of these was the sudden rise in cheap non-corrosive ammo - currently I have over 3000 7.62x39 non-corrosive rounds (LCW/Dominion HP and Norinco FMJ). I reload but it is nice to have access to cheap ammo fun that isn't 22LR. If I can get this to shoot, the FMJ will likely be used as a gopher/plinking round with the HP for hunting big game - I frequently take out newbies so it is nice to have a cheap hunting rifle that can be banged about with even cheaper hunting ammo.
 
I'm fully considering making a barrel block for my vice and doing exactly that with the addition of some peening to help it tighten up if needed.
7.62X39 is the last remaining affordable plinking round and great fun for new shooters due to the minimal recoil.
 
I had pretty poor results with chambering and extraction of the lacquer coated surplus stuff, very stiff to load and worse to extract after firing. I fired 5 rounds and gave up. S&B brass SP was better, but shot around 3" which is OK for deer at short range, but I expect better out of this rig. I did not want to load for yet another cartridge but said fyck it, and got dies. Not shooting it again until I get it bedded and floated....then if it doesn't improve it's going to the EE lol
I think the chamber could be reamed out a bit for better function if you were going to feed it surplus all the time.
 
Mine feeds surplus just fine and pops primers like a champ...... you might be on the right track with a ream Hitzy.
Maybe a few hours in a tumbler would take care of the lacquer?

Here's a look at my floor plate. I didn't notice it till I noticed it was hitting the stock.....



 
Yeah my stock was like yours (albeit the floor plate wasn't touching the wood) I had to put washers on that side to make the floorplate flush. I will take some pics tonight. I haven't tried the lacquer coated cases yet but the Norinco feeds and loads alright. The bolt is tight but I think this means that it should be a nice consistent shooter. I will try running some LCW through the action and see if it chambers smoothly.
 
Here is my M85 - it had the Magwedge Rail on it and a Mark 4 MR/T which I borrowed off my Mini 30. The Magwedge is off and I installed a pair of Weaver bases which fit perfectly (Remington 799 bases). This is also after I put 2 coats of Tru-Gun oil on the stock to seal it up better. I think the wood looks pretty decent but I am not a connoisseur of wood.


You can see the stock is pillar bedded but the inletting is not great. The bolt handle has removed some of the finish from working the bolt.

Here is a closeup:


I fixed my floorplate but mine doesn't seem as crooked as yours. I have a suspicion that the stock is pinching the mag/follower as the floorplate doesn't just swing open but pops and requires me to pull on the floorplate. This issue may also be causing the problem with difficulty in loading the fourth round.


All said, I think Hitzy may be right and that this rifle needs to be opened up and bedded properly. The washers that I am using are just to get an idea of what the rifle is supposed to look like. I think I may need to find some pipe and measure up some pillars and re-pillar bed the rifle. As well, I think a proper glass bedding would make a real difference. I am going to shoot it first and see if it is good or if I need to fix this baby up but it may be a nice little project to slowly work on.
 
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I just checked the lacquer coated Dominion ammo and it actually cycled a lot easier than the copper washed Norinco steel cases. The variability of these rifles is pretty interesting. I can't wait to take this out and shoot some groups...
 
I've only ever fired lacquered ammo out of mine - full stock version, same as yours, also from Corwin-Arms. Picked mine up last November.

Takes a bit of extra effort to work the bolt, but never had case head separation, or anything like that.

2&1/4-2&1/2" groups out of Surplus, Barnaul, or the CanAm $0.25/rd Dominion Ammo. 2" groups out of Hornady SST. Those are all lacquered case ammo.

I'm about 200 rounds through it now, and I keep liking it more every time I take it out. It's just a fun, handy little gun, and reasonably accurate for what it is.

Don't forget to do the trigger adjustments. It's a bit fiddly, but well world the effort. I have mine at a crisp 3lbs, no take up, only a hint of over-travel. Just be sure to get the safety engagement lined up right after you've made all the adjustments (and this is the fiddliest part). I found the safety was really stiff and hard to engage/disengage after making the adjustments, but it smoothed out after a single trip to the range, and now works exactly as it should.

Be prepared to adjust, shoot, break in, and adjust the trigger again. Totally worth the time and effort to get the trigger exactly the way you want.

 
Glock4ever, my floor plate is the same as far as not popping open completely but I just assumed that it's the spring being a bit out of alignment and maybe some rough edges of the follower..... it's the least of my concern at this point.
Where did you order your bases from? Do you prefer the separate bases over the one piece rail because of the extra space for loading?
 
The rough edges on the follower shouldn't matter - if the inletting is done properly the bottom metal won't compress as the screws are torqued in. A good test is to remove the bottom metal and open the floor plate, if it swings freely (like it does on mine) than the bottom metal is being "squished". I like the challenge of this as modding the wood is very easy - a little bit of relief work with a file will go a long way I think. To remedy your problem with the floorplate, I would recommend that you get some washers to place between the bottom metal and the stock. That should prevent you from further denting the wood until you can either get longer pillars or (if you are satisfied with the way it shoots) you can just epoxy in the washers to the stock.

I switched to Weaver Bases for the Remington 799. It is 71A for the front and 23 for the back. I read somewhere else that the screw holes don't line up perfectly for some of the other M85 owners but the Weavers and Magwedge fit perfectly on mine. I got the weavers from Wholesale Sports and they cost me a total of ~$10.50 taxes in (they are on sale). There is definitely more clearance than with the magwedge rail but if you have a funny scope (i.e. unforgiving eye relief) you may want to consider the Magwedge as there is no flexibility to adjust the rings to compensate for the scope. The only reason that I got them is that the screws stripped on mine otherwise I would have kept the magwedge on. The nice thing is that I can always swap the base as the weaver screws seem pretty compatible with the magwedge rail.
 
Right on, hopefully magwedge will jump in on this thread and comment on the hardware quality.
Like I said I haven't looked much at the cause of the less then buttery loading(specially the first round) or why the floor plate doesn't clear easy but I will check out what you are suggesting for sure!
The problem with my floor plate is more then just it not sitting flush with the wood although that would help)..... It's not square to the hinge point.
It's hard to see in the second photo because of the shadow but look at the angle.... it's way off. In the first photo you can look at the inleting and you can see how the metal is not symmetrical, and it's also clearly not perpendicular to the stock if you look closely.

Zastavafloorplate1_zpsa17nnzqc.jpg

zastavafloorplate2_zpsjfiwwinf.jpg
 
That was what I was referring to when I said that your bottom metal looks "crooked". Keep in mind that the mag well has a cut down the center of it (you need to remove it from the stock to see what I am talking about as you can't see it from your pics) which I believe Zastava did to allow easy assembly and to minimize the amount of hand fitting. By allowing them to "squish" the mag well it allows them to crank out a lot of these without having to pay a guy to hand fit each bottom metal to the stock. While we both have the issue with the floorplate not sitting flush with the bottom of the stock, there is also an issue with the bottom metal being "pinched" somewhere. The pinching may or may not be causing your bottom metal to be deformed and hence the funny angle of the floor plate. Only way to tell for sure is to remove the bottom metal and check the symmetry of it outside of the stock. If isn't doing that funny angle thing outside of the stock, you have an issue (like me) with the inletting of the stock and it will require some minor stock relief work. If it is still like that outside of the stock than you may have a poorly made floorplate hopefully it is just the stock.
 
Well....solved some problems with mine...
Neck sizing fired brass solved the hard bolt closing, chamber is really tight, and factory ammo was a ##### to chamber.
Likes .308 bullets, even my handloads with .310 Hornady shot about the same as factory which is pretty bad. .308 110gr vmax shot under 2" at 100m.
I'll try some 150gr RN and 130gr SP .308 and I think I'll be able to get it shooting proper.
 
I had mine full length bedded to remove that issue from the scenario.
Have been working with N200 and Hornady 123 gr SST .310". with mixed results. Tried some BLC2 with the same bullet and it shot well but the velocity was low, BLC2 is just too slow for that short barrel IMO.
I shot .311" 125 gr Sierras with similar results to the SST's. Tried some 150 Gr Sierra .311" over N200 yesterday with very promising results chronoed at 2014 FPS and grouped well. If it continues to shoot well I'll let you know.
For those who don't know Norma200 it is very similar(some claim identical) to Reloader 7.
 
captonion said:
Are they .308 or .310 bore?
Click to expand...

Suppose to be .310.....
Judging by some of the tool mark chatter in the receiver and bolt, they tend to let things go past life expectancy. If the barrels really are hammer forged like they claim, its possible the mandrels are well used and hammered down to .308 or tighter.
I have a .303 Brit that likes .310 bullets so I'll shoot the rest out of that. I don't mind it shooting .308 bullets better, much more selection of quality bullets.
 
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