M14 Smithing Advice

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IronJackWhitton

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Hey folks,

I've had an DA M305 since last year but don't get to shoot it very much (only have about 200 rounds through it). It shoots terribly -- 4 inch groups, at best, at 40 yards (I don't have a range membership so I went to the only one I knew of that allowed day passes and this was the max range I could get). My primary use is a fun shooter, with the occasional taking of a deer. Right now it's not shooting well enough for either -- I might be able to take a deer, but until I'm 100% confident in the rifle's accuracy I can't ethically do that.

My front sight is about 6-8 degrees to the left, which as I've learned from these forums is either a poorly indexed barrel or a poorly made front sight/flash hider. I stuck a straight rod into the gas port and eyeballed it, and it looks to me that this is an indexing problem as the straight rod was canted to one side.

I've done a full inspection after reading through the FAQs and I know what I need to do:

1) Op rod spring guide. Ordering one soon. This is a default mod for Norcs, it would seem.
2) Shims for gas system; it gets hand tight at about 1/4 of a turn past where it should stop. As soon as I can find a place for shims AND an op rod, I'll order both (If there's someone local in Edmonton who stocks them, I'm all ears as I like supporting local business)
3) Op rod Guide is loose -- just a wee bit of play in it. I've read about the remove-and-peen-and-loctite method which I will do.

But none of that is worth it until I've gotten my barrel properly indexed, right?

As I understand it, an under-tightened barrel will have the front sight canted to the right. This can be fixed with a barrel vise and a big wrench to tighten the barrel up.

But an overtightened barrel, canted to the left (like mine) needs to have the "barrel shoulder" repaired.

Is this something a semi-handy guy can do at home? If so, how? Or can someone recommend a "value" smith in the Edmonton area that can do this for me? I'm on a tight budget for my shooting hobbies (that's why I own a Norinco :p)

I'm looking forward to next summer as I understand Tac Teacher will be out this way for a clinic but I was hoping to have it a bit of fun this winter. The gun feeds and fires beautifully apart from not hitting what I want so I'm excited to make this a bit better for accuracy.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Cheers
IJW
 
Flashhider1.jpg


As you can see, I had one that was pretty bad also. The company I bought it from suddenly went quiet when I emailed asking for warranty or help...so I got the barrel chopped and installed the original front sight on a new gas plug block.

P4300819.jpg


The shorties are more fun to shoot IMHO.
Just an option...
 
ipscgraz said:
Flashhider2.jpg.html


As you can see, I had one that was pretty bad also. The company I bought it from suddenly went quiet when I emailed asking for warranty or help...so I got the barrel chopped and installed the original front sight on a new gas plug block.

P4300819.jpg


The shorties are more fun to shoot IMHO.
Just an option...
Click to expand...

Interesting idea! What groups are you able to get with that thing?

Doesn't an overtorqued barrel impact accuracy and the way the op rod/gas cylinder system all lines up?
 
Mine was not over indexed and the barrel was fine. My problem was the flashhider being so far askew and the front sight way over to one side...it was depressing when I saw that on a brand new mail-order rifle.

My front sight is about 6-8 degrees to the left, which as I've learned from these forums is either a poorly indexed barrel or a poorly made front sight/flash hider. I stuck a straight rod into the gas port and eyeballed it, and it looks to me that this is an indexing problem as the straight rod was canted to one side.
Click to expand...

There are far more informed people than me that can speak to this, but is your op rod sliding straight in and out of the guide? If you are in Edmonton there should be some local talent that can help.
 
ipscgraz said:
There are far more informed people than me that can speak to this, but is your op rod sliding straight in and out of the guide? If you are in Edmonton there should be some local talent that can help.
Click to expand...

It seems to be but there is a bit of play in the op rod guide. It moves about half a millimetre as the Op Rod travels through. Phrased another way, If I were to peen the op rod guide to the barrel in it's current state, I'm certain I'd get severe wear very quickly or possibly even total stoppage due to binding.
 
How far off-index do you estimate the barrel to be? Are you going to run the rifle with an optic or just iron sights?

A few degrees won't matter. Hungry/Tactical Teacher tells stories of military issue rifles that were so far off-index that only 50% of the piston was in contact with the Op. Rod and they ran fine.
 
If you have a crappy flash hider, the keepshooting.com product was surprisingly nice and fixed up my m305 perfect. No problem to ship it from US to Canada. I also added some Italian (metric) Garand sights, she shoots NICE. Plus all the usual stuff we do at Barney's clinic.

Now I have a fibreglass GI stock on there too. Still haven't had a chance to test it out with the stock.
 
Pr589 said:
How far off-index do you estimate the barrel to be? Are you going to run the rifle with an optic or just iron sights?

A few degrees won't matter. Hungry/Tactical Teacher tells stories of military issue rifles that were so far off-index that only 50% of the piston was in contact with the Op. Rod and they ran fine.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping to use Optics, but I want the flexibility of optics or Irons. I have a very cheap mount that I plan to upgrade later, and a half-decent Cabelas scope. And while it's running fine, and though I recognize the Irons being canted won't matter with optics, I know it's not as good as it COULD be. It just ain't right, so I want to fix it. It's off by I would guess 1/8th of a barrel rotation or between 6 and 8 degrees.


MauserMike said:
If you have a crappy flash hider, the keepshooting.com product was surprisingly nice and fixed up my m305 perfect. No problem to ship it from US to Canada. I also added some Italian (metric) Garand sights, she shoots NICE. Plus all the usual stuff we do at Barney's clinic.

Now I have a fibreglass GI stock on there too. Still haven't had a chance to test it out with the stock.
Click to expand...

Thanks MauserMike! I wasn't familiar with that site but I'll check them out. Where'd you source the Metric garand sights, same place?

Rodauto said:
what ammo were you shooting? some of the surplus stuff will not shoot worth a crap even if everything on the rifle is perfect!
Rodney
Click to expand...

I had read these things were fickle with ammo, so I tried 150 grain Remington, 150 grain Winchester, and 168 grain Winchester, and 150 grain Federal. It was crap with all of them, just slightly (like a quarter inch) less crap with the Federal. I went through about 120 rounds in the range session, and couldn't get a consistent group -- which I'm 100% sure isn't just me as at 40 yards from a bench this thing should be making touching holes easily, and I'm a fairly good shot on other rifles (Sako, AR-15, .22, and on). Just for kicks -- literally -- I fired a bit of 180 grain Winchester through it before I read that was a bad, bad idea. It was shooting poorly before this, though, so I know that wasn't the only culprit. I have not used any surplus ammo in the gun yet.
 
Ironjackwhitton:

We can tighten this for you. No big deal. It's a Norinco; you can only make 'em better! :evil:

Now I wanna address the scope issue here. I keep reminding folks, it's a Norinco for $500 ish give or take. You can buy a Savage for less money and have it shoot better, but what I'm saying is don't expect match accuracy from a battle rifle. But you can expect a tweaked battle rifle shooting match booolits to surprise the poop out of you. :eek:

Get a good, known reputation scope mount. I don't care how cheap yer mount is because it's just THAT... Cheeep! :eek: I get lots of PM's asking for help and trouble shooting a poopy scope with a poopy mount shooting milsurp copper washed ammo. By doing all this, you are adding and then compounding potential sources of error (now I sound like a science teacher... hold on, I am a teacher). Please, all of you M14 lovers out there, buy good glass. Buy good scope mounts and rings and then go from there. So you cannot afford good mount? QUIT drinking! I'm serious. Stop drinking and watch your money save up FAST.

Better yet, quit smoking and get a gym membership! Now that M14 ain't so heavy anymore! Besides, yer wife or G/F or Jian Gomeshi will still love you even more. yuk yuk yuk So what is a grudge fzck anyways?

Back to the rifle....enjoy the M14, but know that it ain't an M21 or M25 or DMR rifle. Please save your money!

It's a matter of knowing HOW to tweak them and go about doing the work yourself. That's what I've been pushing for decades now..... :D

Please don't spend a pile of money unless you know that you have a shooter here! Many CGNutters spend a whack of $$ hoping to build some White Feather wannabe. Nah, save your money. Put the money into good optics on your Remmy, Tikka, Browning, Sako, Savage, Winnie or Weatherby.



Cheers and keep helping the noobs out there!

Barney
 
No, the Breda M1 Garand sites came from Marstar.

I also bought a new front site from somewhere that wasn't as chunky as the chinese one. Can't remember where though, might have been Brownells. But the M14 stuff Brownells can export is pretty limited, e.g. they could not supply me with a flash hider, even one marked for M1A without an export permit.
 
TT,

Thanks for chiming in! I've read over your posts and learned a ton from you already.

I 100% hear you about the scope mount. I bought the cheap one for two reasons: First, I was in a rush. I wanted use the Norc to try for a deer tomorrow, and only decided to do so last Wednesday (I currently don't have any other rifles as I'm just building my collection -- previous experience was at home with my family's rifles). So it was rapidly available and I had Friday to learn that my gun, which I had only function tested previously just wasn't capable of shooting acceptable groups either with the scope or with irons.

And my 2nd reason: Science. It's a copy of the Springfield 3-point mount, made in China by "AIM Sports", and I couldn't find any information on it on these boards or elsewhere on the 'net besides generally favourable reviews on Amazon so I figured I'd take one for the team and try it out, fully expecting to be disappointed. I am not, because it wasn't expensive, but I know that it's not a good mount by any means. I didn't go cheap on my glass -- I bought it last week when Cabelas had 25% off all of their scopes and I got an additional percentage because it was a display model. The idea was I wanted a good scope that I could later mount to a far nicer rifle. The scope is worth about 50% of the thing it's bolted to, though I paid far less for it.


I definitely don't expect to be firing 5 shots in the same hole at a thousand yards iron sights. Not only am I totally incapable of that but I recognize that even the best M14 platform is still a battle rifle -- i.e body-shaped target at 4-500 yards is considered pretty good. But right now, I'm more likely to hit anything but the target at even 100 yards, which is sub-par performance even for a Norc, no?

In your opinion, given the 6-8 degree over indexing I'm experiencing, is it worth re-indexing the barrel? Or would the gains be minimal/non-existent and I'd be better of unitizing the gas system, better op rod spring guide, etc. and forgetting the barrel? And if the barrel indexing IS important, how would a home hobbyist do that? Again, the rifle cycles fine and the Op Rod lines up with the piston fairly well (better than many examples I've seen on here in my search)

I've read of people using pipe cutters ground flat to reset the shoulder and then re torque the barrel but I'm all ears for other options as I presently do not own such a tool. I'd really prefer to do the work myself and if it was under-indexed I would have jumped in with both feet already but over indexing seems just that slight bit more complex.
 
TacticalTeacher said:
Ironjackwhitton:

We can tighten this for you. No big deal. It's a Norinco; you can only make 'em better! :evil:

Now I wanna address the scope issue here. I keep reminding folks, it's a Norinco for $500 ish give or take. You can buy a Savage for less money and have it shoot better, but what I'm saying is don't expect match accuracy from a battle rifle. But you can expect a tweaked battle rifle shooting match booolits to surprise the poop out of you. :eek:

Get a good, known reputation scope mount. I don't care how cheap yer mount is because it's just THAT... Cheeep! :eek: I get lots of PM's asking for help and trouble shooting a poopy scope with a poopy mount shooting milsurp copper washed ammo. By doing all this, you are adding and then compounding potential sources of error (now I sound like a science teacher... hold on, I am a teacher). Please, all of you M14 lovers out there, buy good glass. Buy good scope mounts and rings and then go from there. So you cannot afford good mount? QUIT drinking! I'm serious. Stop drinking and watch your money save up FAST.

Better yet, quit smoking and get a gym membership! Now that M14 ain't so heavy anymore! Besides, yer wife or G/F or Jian Gomeshi will still love you even more. yuk yuk yuk So what is a grudge fzck anyways?

Back to the rifle....enjoy the M14, but know that it ain't an M21 or M25 or DMR rifle. Please save your money!

It's a matter of knowing HOW to tweak them and go about doing the work yourself. That's what I've been pushing for decades now..... :D

Please don't spend a pile of money unless you know that you have a shooter here! Many CGNutters spend a whack of $$ hoping to build some White Feather wannabe. Nah, save your money. Put the money into good optics on your Remmy, Tikka, Browning, Sako, Savage, Winnie or Weatherby.



Cheers and keep helping the noobs out there!

Barney
Click to expand...

now that..... is an awesome post LOL
one of the reasons I quit offering "accurizing services" is nutshelled in your post hehehe
I may be good at what I do..... real good according to some...... but some rifles you just can't turn from #### into gold and a lot of guys don't realize this.
if your m14.... m1a... whatever shoots 3"inches or under, consistently at 100 meters..... smile you got a good one and the money you spent or haven't spent yet wasn't wasted.
 
45ACPKING said:
now that..... is an awesome post LOL
one of the reasons I quit offering "accurizing services" is nutshelled in your post hehehe
I may be good at what I do..... real good according to some...... but some rifles you just can't turn from #### into gold and a lot of guys don't realize this.
if your m14.... m1a... whatever shoots 3"inches or under, consistently at 100 meters..... smile you got a good one and the money you spent or haven't spent yet wasn't wasted.
Click to expand...

Ah. Ok. So I think I misunderstood Tac Teacher's post.

Basically what you folks are saying is that these are either good or not, and odds are, mine is in the 'not' category -- so stop worrying about tweaks, indexes, and changes because asking for 2" groups at 100 yards is asking for Geese that lay golden eggs? Simply not in the realm of possibility?
 
no, that's not what "I'm" saying at all hehehe

but in your case, if it were my rifle..... i'd be fixing the indexing problem first and worrying about the rest later

index the barrel
ditch the crappy Chinese flash hider and sights, front and back
peen and Loctite the oprod guide on barrel
hit up s&j hardware for a million cycle spring and NM guide rod
verify your gas port alignment , shim if you want to
correct any stock fit issues
get good mags (norky's are good too)

and shoot good ammo
IF your rifle shoots fine, leave it be after all that or upgrade parts if you want
if it still shoots like crap after the above....... well, then it falls into the "you can't turn #### into gold" category and a complete rebuild with nothing but the receiver is in order, if you have the cash to play that game

that's my general advice to those who want to keep the rifle on a budget and have it shoot the best it can.
 
Thanks 45ACPKing, that gives me some much needed direction, and a solid project for the winter :D

If anyone can help with re shouldering/re-indexing the barrel in Edmonton there's a nice bottle of wine in it for ya!
 
My 2011 Norinco shorty is over indexed too. But it is dead on at 50 yards with the 6 o'clock hold. It shoots really well with MFS 145 grains copper washed.
Good luck with yours. And keep us informed on your progress.
 
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