I bought this gun a few years ago, then two kids came and other hobbies got in the way.  I put ten rounds through it yesterday, case ejected, but would never chamber the next round.  Tried three different types of ammo…same result.  Anyone heard of this?  I remember reading something about it quite a while ago, and there is supposedly a fix, just can't recall if it was here that I read it.  

Thanks, Mike

Yes.   mine did the same thing.  

How many total rounds you got through it?  It took about 100 for mine to be reliable.

I sent mine back to Serbu and everything checked out perfectly,  just took some time to break in.  

They are also somewhat picky about brass.

Serbu has outstanding customer service.  You can call there and Mark Serbu answers the phone.

What a strange surname. Is he Serbian I wonder?

I recall they had a problem with the gas block too. Might be worth checking.

You aren't clear on what the actual problem is: "won't chamber next"

Why?
-bolt not going rearward enough to strip the next round?
-strips round but can't get it into the chamber?

I have a very early BFG-50A, and it sounds like you do too.

I'd check to see what recoil spring you have in your build.
There was an early change to a ~10% lighter spring.
(The wire diameter on the heavy spring is .059)
If you have the heavy one you may have stroking issues.

I also ran into some rounds "nosing" into the barrel extension towards the bottom of it,
which stopped the round short of going into the chamber...
-to fix that I added some "M4 feedramps" with a die grinder and an oval carbide burr.

I think the newer guns may have a feature like that now, and they all come with the lighter spring too.

Thanks for the replies.  I did get a hold of Mark, he just suggested more rounds through it before sending it back.   Tried to explain what was happening-- after firing, the shell ejects, and will not bring the next round up out of the mag and into the chamber.  No jams, it closes completely.  Only ten rounds through it total.  Shame I have to spend $3-400 to loosen it up…lol  

I have quite an assortment of ammo.  Some of it is surplus from the 80's..I was told the brass was better and planning on reloading once I collect enough.  Several boxes of new ammo that was recently reloaded as well, but no idea on the specs.  Might just need a little hotter load?

I have two small kids now and am pretty much out of guns for a while.  I sold my progressive reloader and put most of the guns in storage at the range.   Hopefully get back into it down the road when my kids are older.

It could be quite a while before I get to shoot it again, I will report back after running more rounds through it.

What part of Washington are you in?

I would take a part and put grease any where it slides, might even lightly grease the recoil spring. This can help with break ins on new guns.

If that doesn't do it would look into what was mention about the spring which really makes sense.

Fellow I shoot with bought a Serbu 50A in the summer and his rifle chambers ok only cant shoot a dozen rounds before extractor breaks off.  2nd extractor lasted 5 shots before  breaking into 3 pieces all his ammo is Federal factory new.    Another issue he is having with the rifle is the extractor is trying to rip the rim off the brass during the cycling which is likely the issue with the extractors breaking.   Mark Serbu told him to oil the shells to see if this helped with the shells sticking, maybe nobody ever told Mark that oiling ammo prior to shooting them is a no no.   The last extractor broke in November and as of 2 days ago since I spoke to the guy who owns the rifle  he is still waiting for another extractor.

I wonder if this gun is worth avoiding with the issues I keep reading about it.

BTW. If the round isn't cycling you don't have to shoot the gun to weaken the spring, just cycle it manually. This is the same with the FNX 45 tactical which was giving a lot of people trouble, they just cycled it by hand and that was enough.

Maybe because I have a Serbu BFG50A I feel I have to chime in.





To Ljutic, it seems your friend has a problem that has affected many Serbu's. Stuck rounds in a tight chamber, not quite match but almost, given a semi-auto mechanism. It usually happens with Federal, it did to me. Not with survivalops, Barrett or Hornady Amax. Which makes me wonder if Federal rounds are a tad hot. I don't reload (yet…) so that I cannot comment on progressive loads to prove this point.






What your friend has been told by Mark works. The rifle needs probably 50-100 rounds to be broken in. Mark recommended to LIGHTLY OIL the rounds with a rag and shoot a few. I am not going to get into the whole thing about bolt face thrust issue, which is where in theory you could have issues with oiled rounds. I have done my reading and I am not to worried about it… there are a lot of people who know a whole lot more than me that questions this concept. Besides the rounds are not supposed to be dripping in oil.










 

My gun shoots 1.5-2MOA with Federal and myself !!! and I don’t shoot worth a shit… I let the RSO in my range shoot a few rounds and one of the first comments I got was that the trigger was really good. Which is true.
All I can say is I am really happy with the rifle, now you can say that I have convinced myself because I own one (fair enough) having said that mine is pretty reliable and accurate so far.
 
 

I heard it is a tad hot and will stick brass if the chamber is tight/new. Shot PMC, Survival Ops and Federal and only the Federal Eagle stuck a few brass in my new Safety Harbor. SH said not to use it.

Alright after a long winter break, I finally got out the 50A again.

As a quick review,  I was having the cycling issues with the rifle all last year.  The bolt would stop short on every other round.

Over the winter I researched mostly on here, and discovered that MY issue was most likely the brass.  The shoulder was not resizing properly and that could be my problem.  

So I slightly altered my sizing die, by grinding a few thousands off the bottom to allow deeper penetration of the brass,  and then resized about 100 rounds.   I need to really explore annealing the brass for future loadings.

Yesterday the sun was out and it was warm,  and the 50A chewed right through 8 full mags of the newly loaded ammo without a hiccup.

It would seem that my issues with the 50A was not the rifle, but the ammo I was feeding her.  Yesterday was the first time I felt as though the 50A was a reliable rifle.  That was finally a good feeling.

as a side note: I picked up a single shot serbu BFG 50 over the winter and also discovered that my pre-die change rounds will not feed into this rifle easily either.  But the new improved rounds are slick as butter.

Both rifles fired the newly sized rounds without issue.  Hope this helps those oout there having issue with their rifles.

Thanks for the update.  A month or two ago a guy had the same problem with his AR15, his reloads were a few thousandths oversized and worked in 2 out of 3 of his rifles.  I believe he took a couple thousands off the die to fix his problem as well.

Great to hear you got it running like it should!  

I found it is a little more picky on brass than my bolt guns,
But then my brass prep on my "blasting ammo" is pretty down and dirty.  

...it has made me less lax with that, which is probably better for all of 'em honestly.

It's a retardedly fun gun to do mag dumps with.  

I'm posting here to help reverse the rumor about oiling cases being bad.  As a lifelong gun nut and as someone who's made a living designing and building guns for the last 19 years, I know a fair amount about the subject of bolt thrust.  Yeah, oiling cases increases bolt thrust but so does a case head separation!  If you think about it, do you believe that a gun designer would assume that a case head separation could never happen?  And would they design the bolt to be so close to its stress limit that a case giving way would cause it to fail?  I NEVER take the case into consideration as a structural member in my designs, and I'd bet that no gun out there is designed with this philosophy.  So bottom line: whether the case is slick as snot or has completely separated, the bolt will be ok.  Hell, there were many military machine guns designed over the years that actually had case oilers built into them.

If anyone has cycling issues with their BFG-50As please contact me.  We've had a few teething issues with them over the years but they're all sorted out.  As to customer service things have changed...you're more likely to see a unicorn than you are to get me on the phone, but I always answer my emails.  Either try: [email protected] or [email protected]

An update, my 50A is working fine. It was ripping the rims off of Federal XM33, which apparently is both hot and has dirty cases. I light wipe of oil and no more problems. PMC, Barret ball and hornady factory amax all extracted fine. It's also possible I got a bad batch of ammo as my friend's batch wasn't nearly as ugly.

So don't judge your gun on Fed XM33.

Be careful with coating it with oil as that eliminates the gripping power of the case on the chamber wall, and may cause extreme stretching of cases with possibility of ripping off the neck of case upon extraction.
It also increases the load on the bolt lockup.

From the gun designer himself, one post above mine.

OK, but for my practices, I will not oil rounds for any of my rifles. I will polish the cases and chamber before adding oil to the situation. YMMV.

What's your procedure for polishing the chamber?

Cleaning up the dirty ammo: I tried tumbling them for a short while in corncob, but that didn't seem to help. What do you like to do for that purpose?