SKS jamming issues

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CRP_4321

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I put 100 rounds through my Russian SKS and it started to jam. The first time I easily removed it but it left the following marks(dents) on the casing:

PicViniAnni-0004.jpg


Then it fired ok for 20 more rounds and then click, no fire, and a live round jammed in. I was able to remove the trigger but the magazine was stuck too. I ended up taking the cover and spring out and smacking the bolt carrier a bunch of times on the edge of a table to finally get it out.

Any ideas on why this happened? The gun was clean and dry when I started.

Regards,
CRP_4321
 
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It sounds like either the extractor isn't gripping the shell enough to positively strike the ejector, or your chamber might be dirty.

Is it stock, or have you blinged it up? Are you using a shell deflector?

The round above looks to have extracted but not ejected combined with the action short-stroking.

If the extractor slipped off a live round, I'd start by tearing the bolt down and thoroughly cleaning and degreasing under the extractor and also the firing pin channel.

That will likely fix it, but also clean the chamber rigourously.
 
Claven2 said:
It sounds like either the extractor isn't gripping the shell enough to positively strike the ejector, or your chamber might be dirty.

Is it stock, or have you blinged it up? Are you using a shell deflector?

The round above looks to have extracted but not ejected combined with the action short-stroking.

If the extractor slipped off a live round, I'd start by tearing the bolt down and thoroughly cleaning and degreasing under the extractor and also the firing pin channel.

That will likely fix it, but also clean the chamber rigourously.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice.
It is stock with no extras. I bought it a couple weeks ago and just cleaned all the cosmoline off. I never took the bolt apart, just soaked it in dish detergent water. When it was dry the pin rattled back and forth so I figured I was good.

I'll do what you described tonight and give the whole gun a rigorous cleaning.

Regards,
CRP_4321
 
Claven2 said:
It sounds like either the extractor isn't gripping the shell enough to positively strike the ejector, or your chamber might be dirty.

Is it stock, or have you blinged it up? Are you using a shell deflector?

The round above looks to have extracted but not ejected combined with the action short-stroking.

If the extractor slipped off a live round, I'd start by tearing the bolt down and thoroughly cleaning and degreasing under the extractor and also the firing pin channel.

That will likely fix it, but also clean the chamber rigourously.
Click to expand...
:agree:
Also strip the bolt and clean it.
Plus check to see if there is any primer's that have been perieced. It could be jammed in the trigger assembely or your dissconnect bar could be bent.
 
There should be a sticky on this forum about what needs t be done to any new SKS before firing. A complete bolt strip-down is a MUST. It is NOT OPTIONAL. You MUST run the bolt clean and DRY.

Soaking it in something is not enough. Strip it, get some Q-tips and pipe cleaners and really clean it. Only oil the exterior - not the firing pin channel.

This fixes 99.999% of all SKS failures I have ever seen ;)
 
Claven2 said:
There should be a sticky on this forum about what needs t be done to any new SKS before firing. A complete bolt strip-down is a MUST. It is NOT OPTIONAL. You MUST run the bolt clean and DRY.

Soaking it in something is not enough. Strip it, get some Q-tips and pipe cleaners and really clean it. Only oil the exterior - not the firing pin channel.

This fixes 99.999% of all SKS failures I have ever seen ;)
Click to expand...

I must not have gotten that memo... all I did was run an assload of brake cleaner through mine, including down the firing pin channel, then dry it thoroughly. A finger-swipe of oil on the external surfaces and I haven't had a malfunction since it was new. What did I do wrong? ;)

The point is, however, that you NEED to clean the junk out of your bolt - somehow. Soaking it in soapy water is not a thorough method, to be sure.

-M
 
Good plan :) Also, it depends on how heavily greased your SKS is/was. Some of the Russians are basically just oil-dunked. The Chinese rifles and some of the Russian ones are coming packed with thick cosmolene sludge - they are much more difficult to get clean.
 
All Cleaned Up!

I took the bolt apart and used a Q-tip as mentioned and WOW!

8 Q-tips later to finally get all the black stuff out!

What confused me originally was I could hear the pin rattle. Now that it is really clean, the pin rattles very easily, much more than it did before.

Put a few rounds through and no problems so far. Hopefully this weekend I'll get a chance to put 100 rounds through again and give it a better test.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

Regards,
CRP_4321
 
Good to hear. Great advice from the guys here. One suggestion is if you have cosmoline in hard-to-get-to places on METAL, warm up your oven, not too hot, and put the piece on a baking sheet or on a stove element (if electric) with some paper towel. I once had a Mosin Nagant packed in cosmo and I did that, the cosmo ran out of it like water, it certainly helped the cleaning process. Any wiping after that was really easy.
 
As mentioned already, soaking the bolt will not do the trick. As much as a pain it is, you NEED to open the bolt and get in there with a needle, maybe some pipe cleaner and make sure it's spic and span in there. This is generally considered mandatory. However, in my experience, you only need to do this once every 1000 rounds or so, otherwise just wiping the bolt face and some Hoppe's No.9 works wonders.
 
as an experiment I hosed my chinese one down with carb cleaner (works better at getting varnish and gunk off than brake cleaner) then blasted it with the air compressor until no more colored liquid came out.... after all that I disassembled it to see what kind of job it did, and other than a little oil around the extractor spring, it was all bare metal, even qtipping it came back clean.

although for the 5 seconds of extra work it takes to disassemble the bolt, its better to know for sure that its all clean
 
tapedeck74 said:
It's really not that big of a deal to disassemble the bolt. Takes like 2 minutes to disassemble/clean/reassemble, why waste brake cleaner?
Click to expand...

I agree, at first I didn't know what was inside so I tried to just clean in with dishwater. After this thread I took the bolt apart and there is only 4 pieces and putting the pin back the right way was easy. I'm shaking my head for not doing it the first time now that I know how simple it is.
 
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