SKS - Fired 4 Rounds and then nothing....

W

Wizzerd

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Location
Edmonton
So my son bought himself an SKS with the Tapco stock. I took the slide/firing pin assembly apart and cleaned it all out, rust and cosmoline. Put it back together and headed out to the range today with my brother. I fired 4 rounds and then it quit on the 5th round, would not fire. Primer was not even marked even though I could hear the hammer hitting. Pulled the mag out of it and confirmed that yes I could see the end of the firing pin. Now, my brother noticed that the lever that holds the gas tube in place had moved into the 'open' position so we thought maybe that was it. Put the lever back where it belongs and tried again, same thing. The firing pin is not striking the primer on the casing. I still have to pull it all apart again to clean out the gas tube but I am wondering if there are other things I should be checking other than the firing pin/trigger assembly?

Thanks !
 
A friend had one where the lever for the gas tube would open and the gas tube assembly lifted out slightly
This only affected the cycling of the rifle and not the firing of it as the gas piston couldn’t contact the rod that moves the bolt back
 
One trick I know is to hold the whole firing pin assembly in one hand and shake it. If you can hear something moving around, it means to firing pin is moving and at the very least you can rule that out.
 
Try taking the bolt out of the carrier and shaking it. If you can hear rattling, take the bolt apart and see if maybe the firing pin is broken (it happens, rarely, but it happens). You should be able to see the firing pin actually move when shaking the bolt.

Since the rifle did fire 4 rounds, I'm thinking that the firing pin is jammed in its channel in the bolt or it's broken. That firing pin channel in the bolt can be a cast iron beyotch to get completely cleaned out of the dirt and hardened cosmoline that's been in there for the last 50 years or so.
 
You’ll also want to confirm that the action is returning to battery fully. Could be out of battery when you’re trying to fire.
 
I had an issue like this but it happened every 10-20 rounds. Click no bang, cycled fine but was not hitting the primer. Upon taking the bolt apart I found a tiny circular piece of the primer jammed in the firing pin channel blocking the pin from going forwards... after some research I found that my firing pin was a little to long so I sanded it down slowly and carefully.
Also that sometimes the bolt faces have a small ring around the firing pin hole from machining that may be sharp and cause this same issue so again I slowly sanded and smoothed the bolt face. A few hundred rounds later and have had no issues again!
This was a Yugo SKS
 
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