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Posted: 2/2/2010 10:52:42 PM EDT
DAY 1: I got my second M76 out a few weeks ago. Loaded up 5 mags full of 1980s Romy laq’d-steel and all 5 mags cycled almost flawlessly while rapid firing. Someone told me NOT to rapid fire this rifle  . In the middle of these 50-rds there was one fail to extract from the chamber. A little sticky but it came out. I loaded up the five mags again and then in rapid-fire started having several FTF and FTE problems right away. Finally we had a day-ender with one fail to extract that was so bad I had to go buy a steel rod to tap it out. Gas port was on #3
DAY 2: On Sunday I filled up all mags with 1950s Yugo and it was a disaster. Almost every other round was a dud and those that did fire left the following round barely pulled from the mag. There were a couple bent cases on the ones lucky enough to make it ALMOST to the chamber. It was unusable. This ammo shot great in my buddies M53 but perhaps this was stored badly over the years. I loaded up all steel Romy again set the gas port on #2 (which I’m told is the “normal” setting) and in 50rds it was about 95% problem free. Next I tried some old Turkish. Bad idea. The 1st one had the rim ripped off the case and left it pretty tight in the chamber. Fortunately we were able to pry it out. I inspected the rest of the Turkish and there were too many cracked necks and/or loose bullets. Very brittle brass. I think I'll leave that stuff for a bolt gun one day. In comparison with my first M76 this action is beautifully smooth. BHO works on most of the 5 mags most of the time. I was thinking the mag well might be slightly out of tolerance b/c BHO should work all the time. But then again we have that signature problem of the nose-diving followers so this may be a bad parameter to watch/consider. At minimum this particular rifle (or make and model) is very finicky about what it eats. Other guys say their M76s eat all. Not this one so far. But I haven't had the best ammo either. I am waiting on an batch of new PRVI 198gr FMJBT 8x57 to hopefully establish some kind of a benchmark from which to evaluate and really work with it on paper. Is #2 the best default “starting” position for the gas port? #3 with a larger port should be for “weaker” ammo and #1 for the HiPow stuff like the true IS (or M75) ammo. Anyone else have finicky ammo issues or cases stuck in chambers? |
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