Took my FAL shooting today, mostly just for function and mag testing. The rifle is a well worn Imbel parts kit I built onto a Century receiver.
I have a total of 10 mags and fired about 80 rounds today, mostly loading 4 per mag/string to get equal left and right position loads.
3 mags functioned 100% and each of these got about 13 rounds total through without a failure.
4 had consistent failures from the LEFT position only. The bolt was missing the case base and instead hitting the round up near the shoulder and jamming.
1 wouldn't lock into the rifle
1 had a sticky follower and may need to be disassembled, cleaned and reassembled, then tested again.
1 failed to present the rounds high enough for the bolt to strip them.
I've seen info about modifying the upper receiver to make the lower opening more closely match the shape of the mags to smooth feeding. But since 3 functioned perfectly, I don't know that this is warranted. I'm hoping that by comparing the functioning mags to the others that I will be able to tweek the 4 to work correctly.
The one that wouldn't lock in and the one the wrong height both need to be checked for dimensions and hopefully can be tuned.
Any thoughts on these mags? They are all surplus. Some have Falcon base plates and followers (two of the 3 good ones). Some have been refinished IIRC (4 four left-feed failures).
Rob