Norinco NZ85-B Question

D

Davidf

CGN Regular
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Location
Milton, Ontario
I bought one of these from Marstar and for a long time I was delighted with it. About a month ago I had it out at the range and had a fairly scary failure. In fact I won't take it out again till I can either get a gunsmith to look it over or I can understand what went wrong.

I was shooting in the Monday night match at BRRC. After about 60 - 70 rounds I pulled the trigger and got click. Then when I went to open the slide to eject the round in the chamber it was stuck and I couldn't budge the slide. Now what in the hell do you do? I can't set the pistol down until I can prove it safe and it's certianly not safe with a jammed action and probably a live round in the chamber. After about 5 minutes of alternating between dropping the hammer and trying to pull back on the slide it sudden fired and ejected the case normally.

Can anybody guess at what was wrong? I was shooting cast lead reloads with Unique powder so it was a little dirty but not so bad I anticpated any trouble.

Anyway, the pistol sits in my safe and I'm starting to want to use it again!
 
If it was my gun, I would start by completely stripping it for a good cleaning. Then I would inspect the barrel, slide and extractor. Firing pin channel must be cleaned.The chamber might have accumulated a lot of grit. Unique is not the cleanest burning powder, lead bullet do melt and lead the barrel, mostly just ahead of the chamber.

I suspect that the ammo might have been loaded too long. This will jam the bullet hard againt the front of the chamber and the slide might have been slightly out of battery.

Clean, inspect, lube and check again with standard ball ammo.
 
after about 4,000rs I had a couple of FTE's caused by a buildup of crud on the extractor. The CZ extractor has a bit more meat on it and I will likely replace it one of these days.
 
Thanks Janeau,

I'll do this. I know that Unique isn't very clean burning. The rounds could have been long but I doubt it. Definitely could have been lead building up too.

Would you recommend disassembling the firing pin assembly (probably wrong terminology) I haven't done this yet because I have to drive our two small pins and I'm worried about being able to reassemble. I have no idea which way parts might fly under the spring tension.
 
David, the problem is not in the firing pin mechanism. There was a lead buildup that prevented the action from fully closing, which was then eventually cured by repeated hammer drops :) A good barrel and chamber scrub should do it.

Gunnar
www.armco-guns.com
 
Gunnar works on these things for a living, so you can trust what he says; however, if it were my pistol, I'd also make sure that the firing pin moved freely as well.
 
Thanks Gunnar! That makes perfect sense. Plus it means I can use this pistol again without too much worry.

The one think I can't understand is why couldn't I pull back the slide and eject the round? Would the cartridge have been jammed that tightly?
 
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