Trying to Sight in this norc..........

D

D3vin

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Basically having a very frustrating time trying to sight in my m305. The setup is a typical 3-9x40 bushnell scope mounted on the m14.ca LSP rail.
Everything on the gun from the rail to the scope are all tightly bolted down. At the 100 yard mark, I can hit the paper but cant make any decent groups if I tried.
I make better groups using the iron sights on my svt 40...So what the heck am I doing wrong?
At this point I'm better off putting a red dot on and smack my head against a wall.
 
With the norc, I'de be lucky to get 5-6" groups. The rifle itself has been looked over. no tweaking needed.
Perhaps I'm just hopeless with scopes.
 
I would read through the stickies, and maybe tighten the rifle up as much as possible. swap out the op-rod spring guide for a Sadlak or S&J, Peen the op-rod guide mounting position and tighten it up. Check your gas-lock and see if its tight so there is no slop. All this should help tighten up the groupings a bit, then try it again. Hopefully you can tighten up the grouping a bit.
 
I just read a very interesting group of threads on m14.com.....

It seems that there are quite a few options out there to increase your dwell time in m1a/M14 rifles.

It also appears that most if not all of the guys who have gone to such a device have also shrunk their groups. One enterprising fella made a shim out of an old gas lock to increase the internal dimensions of his gas cylinder, and shrunk his groups considerably!

But that is just the thing that comes to mind right now as I just finished reading the thread in the other forum..... Timing is what you do when you've done everything else and you're trying to shrink your groups from 2" to 1.5"......

Standard practice for me in this situation is to;

Rack the slide, ensure the rifle is empty. Run the CH, don't hold the thing as it slams home.... Does the rifle ping?
Check the op-rod guide, is it loose? Is it off centre?
Check the op-rod spring guide, is it bent? Any kinks in the spring?
Check your gas piston, does it have vacuume? Is it centred in the gas cylinder (no side to side play)
Check the gas lock timing, does it need a shim?
Check the flash hider, any marks on the inside? Is it tight? Is it welded?
Check the bolt to see how bad the lock-up is, is the bolt contacting on both sides of the receiver when fired? Is not how bad is it?
Do a tilt test.

At this point you should be able to diagnose any and all problems with the rifle, if there are any. If some of this is Greek, then you have to go to the top of the main battle rifles forum and read all of the stickies! It will teach you how to do all this stuff.

Art luppino once stated "if you've checked everything, and nothing seems to be wrong, change the gas plug. It works probably 80+% of the time"

If you were local, id say bring it by and I'd have a look for ya!

I hope this helps!
Cheers!
 
read all of the above as it may apply. The US Military Standard of ordnance for the M305 is 8 MOA at 100 yards. You have a rack grade rifle. Even with a good shooter that has been meticulously rebuilt for match grade may only get 1 to 1.5 MOA. The M305 is very very load sensitive. Even just changing the op rod, op rod spring, op rod guide, and gas piston can have a large effect on accuracy.
Mine is in a Sage EBR and I only get 1.5 to 2.5MOA at 100 meters with the obligatorily flyer. Good enough to road hunt with for bears for sure.
 
All great advice here! Yes, the M14 was designed as a battle rifle and here we are trying to make it into a precision rifle. :)

It can work, but at what cost? You sure you wanna head down that road?

Start by eliminating all the "sources of error". Science Teacher hat ON! Tighten up what you can. Shoot match booolits if you handload. Then go after the gas system to tighten things up... shim if need be, 180 degree or flip your gas cylinder lock if need be, then try and hit one of my M14 clinics whenever I happen to be across the country!

Lots of very experienced help here on the CGN MBR Forum over the years (since 2002) we've been empowering M14 lovers to reach out and help each other! Network with other M14 lovers at the gun ranges and help one another! It only gets better! :wave:

Cheers,
Barney
 
D3vin said:
Basically having a very frustrating time trying to sight in my m305. The setup is a typical 3-9x40 bushnell scope mounted on the m14.ca LSP rail.
Everything on the gun from the rail to the scope are all tightly bolted down. At the 100 yard mark, I can hit the paper but cant make any decent groups if I tried.
I make better groups using the iron sights on my svt 40...So what the heck am I doing wrong?
At this point I'm better off putting a red dot on and smack my head against a wall.
Click to expand...

If the scope mount is tight, and it groups ok with irons...
Im going to go and put my money on it being the scope.... bushnells are crap, the internals bounce around on all their cheap scopes especially on high recoil guns like a M305. You end up with a wandering zero making it look like your getting a monster large grouping.
The bushnell on the savage AXIS has a replacement cost of $60, and working at WSS they came in all the time with the cross hairs twisting around inside, broken off, and even the glass shattered inside (no marks externally, it was mounted on a 30-06). sure replacement is free to the customer... but the ammo to re-zero the scope every time it breaks is kinda expensive. This scope retails around $100-$160 on its own.
Even the 3500 series is wish wash, being incredibly dark compared to there competitors, and sometimes with focus issues at the higher ends of the dial. so unless its a bushnell 4500/6500 that's were my money is for this issue.
 
Where'd you get the idea the US Military has a standard for the M305? You have documentation? The U.S. Army has never used Chinese made copies of anything.
D3vin, what ammo are you using? You shooting off a solid rest? What groups size are you expecting?
 
LordEvilPepper said:
If the scope mount is tight, and it groups ok with irons...
Im going to go and put my money on it being the scope.... bushnells are crap, the internals bounce around on all their cheap scopes especially on high recoil guns like a M305. You end up with a wandering zero making it look like your getting a monster large grouping.
The bushnell on the savage AXIS has a replacement cost of $60, and working at WSS they came in all the time with the cross hairs twisting around inside, broken off, and even the glass shattered inside (no marks externally, it was mounted on a 30-06). sure replacement is free to the customer... but the ammo to re-zero the scope every time it breaks is kinda expensive. This scope retails around $100-$160 on its own.
Even the 3500 series is wish wash, being incredibly dark compared to there competitors, and sometimes with focus issues at the higher ends of the dial. so unless its a bushnell 4500/6500 that's were my money is for this issue.
Click to expand...

It definitely sounds like the scope. Cause its seems like I have wandering cross hairs. I shoot dead center on the cross hairs and the bullet goes elsewhere. And the result differs with every shot.
 
D3vin said:
The rifle itself has been looked over. no tweaking needed.
Click to expand...

IMO, they all need tweaking, which is part of the fun.

If it were me ;) I'd take the scope and rail off and (in a perfect world) throw an M1 rear sight assembly on.
Optionally, go through the stickies in this forum and apply all the tweaks you can. You don't have to do any of them this time around, you can always revisit the tweaks once you develop some confidence in the rifle and remove any mind-fu@king your rifle is giving you! :)

Take it back to the range, but in addition to the Norinco ammo, bring some higher quality ammo for a fresh start.

With your alternate ammo, bring it right back to 25yds and shoot some groups with irons, applying your iron sight shooting skills to their fullest.
Don't even concern yourself with a zero yet, just hold the same point of aim to establish some baseline accuracy.

Then step it out to 50yds and do the same.

Repeat the 25/50 yard experiment with each type of ammo you can find/afford, then do it with the Norc ammo. One of my rifles loves the Norc ammo, the other hates it, go figure.

This should give you a good idea of what the rifle is going to do at 100, and reassure you (or confirm your worst nightmares!) that the rifle itself is not the problem.

These rifles are hard on optics. I've destroyed 2x less than quality scopes chasing the dragon early on. I still want to scope one, someday maybe.

Good luck!
 
D3vin said:
I'm shooting your standard norinco 140 odd grain fmj.
Click to expand...

that might be the problem...

Norinco in my 18" AR gets 6-8 MOA

Hornaday bulk 55gr FMJBT .223 hand loads in Norinco brass gives me around 3 MOA :)

Norinco makes kind of crummy ammo IME I think it may be their crappy bullets
 
D3vin said:
Basically having a very frustrating time trying to sight in my m305. The setup is a typical 3-9x40 bushnell scope mounted on the m14.ca LSP rail.
Everything on the gun from the rail to the scope are all tightly bolted down. At the 100 yard mark, I can hit the paper but cant make any decent groups if I tried.
I make better groups using the iron sights on my svt 40...So what the heck am I doing wrong?
At this point I'm better off putting a red dot on and smack my head against a wall.
Click to expand...

D3vin said:
I'm shooting your standard norinco 140 odd grain fmj.
Click to expand...

You may have a faulty scope, but if I was to guess (not seeing the rifle) I'd look hard at the ammo.

Norc ammo is not exactly known for accuracy in many (perhaps most) rifles. Try some standard 150 gr hunting ammo and see what happens.
 
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