SVT40 excess headspace?

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GingerBear

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Finally bought an svt, a decent tula for a decent price.
BUT its splitting/bulging cases at the shoulder, a couple splitting at the neck, and some stretching just above the head...
Rifle cycles ok, has a few misfires but i chalk it up to poor ammo.
This sounds like headspace to me, but maybe someone has more experience with these?
What did you do for a fix?

Firing standard czech surplus, but will try s&b ball next. Thought of firing brass and just neck sizing...
 
Czech surplus as any combloc surplus should be fine. Make sure it's Czech though and not repackaged Chinese. Some owners have issues with Chinese. Clean chamber flutes with brush, clean it really good, sometimes cosmo and dirt hardens there. Try again. Make some pics of brass. Try another com bloc ammo, just not Chinese.
In theory you can get excessive headspace on early rifles, before they reinforced receiver wall. On practice I have never heard about such an issue, reasons being a) refurb rifles were refurbed to normal headspacing and b) it takes A LOT of firing to get receiver stretching again, I mean like A WAR LOT OF FIRING. They use to manufacture slightly longer bolts to deal with such issue during the war.
 
svt1940 said:
As Horilka pointed, clean chamber very good. I fired everything in my svt, chinese,czech surplus,commercial ammo and i never experienced case problems.
Click to expand...

A clean chamber is very important in any semi,I use a .45 mop in mine,cycles perfectly with gas setting at 1.2.
I don't shoot surplus,but use the powder and bullets and transfer them into PRVI cases,don't have to take everything apart to get
rid of the corrosive salts,just clean the barrel and the chamber.
WRT the chamber,if it is spotless you should clearly see the flutes in it,they are there to aid in extraction.
 
A clean chamber is super important the ensure the case isn't hanging up for sure. Also important is the gas setting because the SVT can cycle pretty violently with a high setting. I think my SVT works great with a gas setting of 1.2 or maybe a little higher shooting combloc ammo. It does not like the Chinese ammo as much so I pretty well only shoot silver tip. I get horrible looking brass with split necks and great big black streaks on the cases when shooting the Chinese stuff.
I'm not a fan of neck sizing semi auto brass due to the distortion from the extraction process. I FL size all my semi auto brass and chuck it after 6 firings.
 
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