I don't know nor do i pretend to know a lot about guns so I'm bringing my question here.

Recently i picked up a M1 carbine and when i took it to the range i found it wouldn't feed properly. At first I thought it was the magazine so i ordered a new 30 rd and a new 15 rd magazine from AIM Surplus.

Today I decided to go to the range and on the way i stopped by to pay the person i bought some guns from. While i was there we found 8 more mags for the M! carbine. I came home and threw a few rounds in each mag to see if they would feed. Some mags did better than others but i still cannot get the gun to feed each round without snagging.




Sorry for the terrible pics.

The round is getting hung up on the bottom of the barrel, other rounds will get hung up on the left and or right of the barrel.

I took a few mags apart and some of the springs are bent while others seem to be fine.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Clean and oil the entire rifle. Get out any old grease or junk from the action.

1-Fresh springs from Orion7 or Fulton Armory. The recoil spring is the heart of the action. Magazine springs need to be fresh as well...don't get caught up into using extra power springs, standard is fine

2-Make sure the magazine lips are not deformed or bent out of spec.
Bend one bad magazine back into spec and see if you get the "feel" of what make it run again.

3-Check the magazine catch to ensure it makes magazines seat properly to allow rounds to feed correctly. If the magazine tilts up or down at the chamber too much, you get issues too.

The M1 Carbine likes to have the full force of the bolt being racked rearward and flying forward to chamber a round. DUMBY ROUNDS should be used so that you do not have an AD.
Softly racking the action to check feeding may not be good enough to give you a good idea on reliability.

maybe this will help :)

http://forums.thecmp.org/forumdisplay.php?f=6
The M1 Carbine Forum at the CMP, these guys can help way better.

I took it apart and cleaned it out right after those pics were taken.

Do you think it could be the recoil spring since the round is catching on the rear of the barrel?

I took some of the mags i have apart and stretched the springs and made sure they were in properly. This seemed to help a tad but not perfectly.

After doing some research i decided to sacrafice one mag and bent the lips of the mag up just a tad and this helped as well. (almost went thru an entire mag with no issues.)

Springs are designed to compress, then expand back to their original starting length. When you stretch them, it is not good for the life of the spring...basically have to replace it with a new spring.

The recoil spring absorbs the force of the bolt coming back in recoil, and then drives the bolt forward. You want a spring that is full strength to avoid damage to the receiver (bolt slapping the rear). the strong spring helps drive the bolt forward (feeding) into battery.

The recoil spring could be original to the rifle, or it could be a few years old...no way to really know, so start off fresh :)

OP, what is the maker of your carbine? Most replies are assuming it is either GI or one of the GI clones.
Guys he may have one of the old Universals which had a different spring configuration.

Serial number places it in the last run of Inland's.

I have ordered a few dummy rounds as another has mentioned. I am also looking at buying a new recoil spring the are like $10 max.

I agree that it is more than likely the spring.  Stay away from Wolf springs, especially the extra power springs.  They cause more problems than they solve.  Oil rotating parts........hammer pins, trigger pins.  Grease, lightly(especially this time of year due to the cold) sliding parts.  Slide grooves on the barrel, bolt lugs, camming cut in the slide, hammer face.

As above, when you stretch a compression type spring you damage the structure of the steel, ruining it.
Usually the spring will collapse again, and may just break.

Make sure the magazine springs are in the mag correctly.  Often they get turned around.

Look for burrs on the chamber mouth.

TRY DIFFERENT AMMO.  Often that's all it takes.

If you're using dummy cartridges, make sure they're action proving dummies.  Action proving dummies are the exact weight, size, and balance of live ammo.  Other types of dummies are not.
In any case, dummies may not give an accurate test that only live ammo can.

Take the action out of the stock, remove the recoil spring and test the action for binding.  Put it back in the stock without the spring and test again for any binding caused by the stock.

As above, inspect the magazine catch to insure it's holding the magazine all the way up and not allowing it to tilt.

definitely get Orion7 spring kit.

I will reinforce what others have said to the extent that this sounds like a mag catch related issue- especially since it occurs with multiple magazines.  Mag catch replacement is a piece of cake.  Use the improved mag catch for 30 round mags.

Mags should be usgi and springs should be 5-3/4", I think is the spec.  

Recoil spring should 10-1/4" I think the spec is.  

Cleaned and lubed properly.  (grease)  and fed good ammo.  

Supposedly this is the recipe.  I gotta get mine out again soon to see if mine runs better too now.  Because I haven't been too successful at getting mine to run properly.  But I had replaced my recoil spring from Fulton when I first got my carbine and I didn't know the spec length.  Turns out the stupid new spring I bought from them wasn't even to spec.  So yeah, Orion7 is probably the better way to go.  

Oh yeah, the mag catch thing is a good tip too.

regarding worn out springs.  Stretching them might/will get you through the day but be rest assured they will fail again in short order.  

So if you're stretching them on the range you should be ordering a replacement spring post haste.

Hell I used to get in pissing matches when I'd see police armorers doing that on the range.

Are you using the 30 round mags?

If you don't have the M2 mag catch, the 30 rounders don't work well at all.

Replacing the magazine catch fixed this problem on mine.