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Posted: 8/9/2006 6:08:18 AM EDT
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My guess it that you a lot of magazine wobble. That 10 round steel magazine is a Weiner and is a good a magazine as you will ever find for a WASR-3. Here's how to test your rifle. Load a magazine with either live ammo or better yet dummy rounds or spent cases. With the bolt closed insert the magazine. With one hand pull the bottom of the magazine down and forward. With the other hand pull back and release the bolt handle. My guess is that the bolt will miss the cartridge head and leave a nasty dent in the side of the case. To make it harder, when loading a round from the left of the magazine try to pull the bottom of the magazine to the right and vise versa. For an even harder test do the same thing with the gun upside down. That way gravity will pull the bolt even further away from the case. The solution to this problem is to either weld extra steel to the magazine catch. Or to remove four the rivets that hold the trigger guard in place and grind the selector stop thinner. Or both. Welding extra steel to the bottom of the bolt might be a good idea too. But I don't know if this would effect the functioning or heat treating of the bolt. You can correct the side to side wobble by installing a shim or two to go inside the mag well. First cut a piece of 1/8" steel to fit inside the mag well then grind it thin enough to fit a magazine. Then drill two holes through the side of the receiver and the shim. Tap the holes in the shim. Make the holes in the receiver larger to allow the screws to pass through. Secure with two button head cap screws. Any of these corrections will void your warranty. Personally I view WASR-3's a kits that come preassembled. They need tweaking to work. |
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I have a Century WASR-10. Mine had (has) serious problems feeding, worst with Wolf HP. If you search the forums you will see that this is a known problem. When I called Century, they said they knew about the problem and how to fix it. I sent my gun in. When I got my gun back it looked like it had been worked on by a drunk with a Dremil, and the part of the receiver above the mag catch had been hammered in. The gun still jammed just as badly as when I sent it in, and now it was so difficult to get previously good mags in and out that at one point I had to hit the mag catch against the edge of the shooting bench. I've tried calling Century, but the people who answer the phone won't let me speak with anyone with the authority to do something. I hope your luck with Century people and products is better than mine was. John W in SC |
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I bought a WASR-3 and had what I think is a similar problem. My WASR-3 came with a bastardized bakelight mag. CAI had apparently modified the top of the mag catch to make their abortion mag work (thought is didn't work well). The result was nearly 100% FTFs when using Wieger mags. I noticed that the Wieger mags would feed if they were pulled backwards while cycling rounds. This was because the top of the mag catch had been ground down too far which was allowing the top rear of the magazines to sit too low. A single weld bead added to the top of the mag catch by a friend of mine, a little dremel work, and a little finish work with a hand file fixed the problem perfectly. Let us know how your rifle is when you get it back. If you still have problems with it, we can walk you through fixing it. I've fixed three Century AKs now. They're usually very simple, very easy fixes. My WASR-3 was the most frustrating only because it took a while to get the weld bead added. |
| Odds are the mag catch is to short and it is an easy fix. My WASR3 had lots of FTF problems. and it is know that alot of those rifles had a mag catch that was ground to far down. Bottom line is that the mag is not only wobling side to side due to no dimples in the rec, but it is droping to low at the mag catch and the bolt is ridding over the round. I did not send my rifle back but did get them to send me a new mag catch, and retaining pin for free. It solve the FTF problems and the gun is 100% with Weiger mags. A side benifit to fixing the mag catch was that about two thirds of the left to right woble is gone now that the mag is locking up right. CIA was very nice to deal with regaurding this issue and the lady that handled my complaint to admitt that there have been many complaints about the mag catch causing FTF. |
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We've previously TIG welded pieces of sheet metal to the inside of recievers, similar to what the Russians originally did on the RPK, to try and help side to side wobble. They will be very thin. If you try to screw the pieces in you won't have much threading to work with and they will work loose over time. Welding extra steel to the bottom of the bolt is a bad idea for a bolt that has to rotate inside the barrel trunion to lock up the action. Oversize bolt = no lock up = gun won't go into battery and fire. Anyway the mag catch problem described by Rogue-one is only a symptom of a greater problem. The problem was, the mag catch was ground down by the angry beavers in the first place because the barrel trunion is positioned too far to the rear, making it impossible to get a magazine to seat if you simply replace the mag catch. The mag will go in but the catch won't flip forward to hold the mag in. Andrew8 got lucky in that he was able to strike a perfect balance with careful hand filing, but the functioning of his gun is now dependent on a tiny little piece of filed down weld that's under alot of pressure. Andrew8 do you have to pull back pretty hard on your mags to get the mag catch to do its job when you reload? How about you Rogue-one, you said yours is so tight that the side to side wobble was affected, how hard is it for you to reload? How much pressure is being put on a stamped steel, non-hardened mag catch? Course, the only way to truly fix the underlying problem is to drill out the barrel trunion rivets, weld up the holes, reinsert the trunion and insert the type of magazine you wish to use (hopefully 30 round Weiger mags), clamp everything together while properly fitted and redrill the rivet holes in the correct place, further forward. Of course you are looking at a couple hours labor and having to refinish at least the receiver, if not the whole gun (WASRs are born needing refinishing anyway). Still, it could be worse. Had a Century in 7.62 sent to me awhile back by a customer who said his front sight post was canted. The gas block was also canted exactly the same amount. When I inspected the gun I realized I could rotate the barrel with my bare hands if I tugged on it really hard! The barrel trunion was about two thousanths oversize and the only thing holding the gun together was the barrel pin! I wound up having to replace his trunion with one that was the correct spec, restriking the Century serial number, and refinishing the whole thing. It was actually dangerous to fire in the condition it was in when I first got it. Good luck with all your projects. www.mcarms.com |
| The new mag catch that CIA sent me was just a tad longer, and the Weiger mags lock in easy with no mods to either the mag or the catch, but the modified 30 round 74 mag that came with the gun will not even come close to locking in with the new mag catch. I did not plan on using it anyway. |
| They also did not replace the follower in the 74 mag they sent me. And even with the origianl mag catch the 74 mag had lots of FTF but it did fit better then the Weigers. There was also one 10 round steal mag that came with it, looks like a cut down Weiger, that had about the same amount of FTF's that a full size Weiger had. A fellow co worker and board member here has several 74 mags with, what I think is robinson made followers, that run great out of his Krinked out SAR 3. I have only delt with CIA on one other occasion and they took care of me, but you get the feeling that quality, doing somthing right, and putting a solid product out is somthing that never crossed their minds. I know some may feel differant but I think many will agree. |
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-Duke-Nukem- My WASR-3 reloads very smooth and I haven't had a single malfunction since the operation.  I get the impression that the mag catches on several rifles were modified to allow the butchered bake lite mags to lock up without actually testing each rifle to see if it 'needed' it. The bake lite mag that came with my rifle still fits, but I noticed that the bottom of the rear lockup tab has been ground. I have a few Robarms modified bakelite mags and they have never fed reliably in this rifle, before or after. Is there any quick and dirty way to tell if the trunnion was installed too far back? Something like a reliable visual indicator? |
My WASR3 wouldn't chamber the first round using the Weiger mag. The problem was the magazine itself. It had a bent lip of steel where the cartridge shoulder contacted the mag on the left side. Fortunately, I had a pair of needle nose pliers in my range box(for adjusting G3 sights) and was able to bend the lip out of the way. It worked, and used the Dremel to clean it up when I got home. I can't imagine Century used that mag to test fire the rifle--it simply would not/could not work. Either that, or they didn't test fire the rifle at all, which really wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has dealt with this company. I know that they didn't use the bakelite mag that was included, because it wouldn't even lock up until I Dremeled out the rear corners of the mag well. Century just blows my mind.
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