auto sks

[Seancass]

my friend went with me to a local gun store and purchased a pretty black stock chinese sks w/ scope. real nice. much better balance than my yugo sks. so he bought it, impulse buy.

get it home, load her up, i say "hey, dont cock that inside, they have a tendency to slam fire, i hear." so outside we go. he cocks it nice n slow, takes aim at a fallen log. pulls the trigger and seven rounds go down the barrel before it stops. profanity is slung. try it again, and the remaining three go off with only 1 trigger pull. i take it apart, the firing pin jiggles just fine. not stuck. without checking out the trigger mec. the gun looks fine, but because of the plastic stock, getting the trigger out would be hard.

so we fill her back up and try again. mind you we are in BFE so we could have shot this thing full auto all day and no cops would have shown up. this time he pulls back and lets the bolt fly forward, and about two rounds go off. the rest of the remainding rounds where spent similarly, without a single trigger pull.

he took the gun back to the store and got his money back. i am now thinking about getting the plastic stock, i liked it. scope wasnt bad either, it was a side mount, not the one that mounts on the removable peice. up untill the full auto, i liked his gun better than mine.

 

[1911user]

Was he using remington ammo in the SKS?

 

[ID_shooting]

Aside from a dirty gun, re-worked sear/trigger mating, and fireing pin installed backwards, non-milspec ammo would be the biggest culprit IMO.

 

[Seancass]

i believe it was winchester ammo, but it was not mil-spec.

 

[ID_shooting]

That was probably it. non-milspec ammo has a softer primer. Since the SKS uses a floating fireing pin, the inertia of the pin when the bolt closes can be enough to set it off. The mil-spec rounds use a tougher primer.

If I were to bet, that would be my bet.

 

[1 old 0311]

Cosmoline/dirt/crud can stick the firing pin on a SKS. This is very common. Pull the bolt, soak in mineral spirits, to clean.

 

[Limeyfellow]

Once you made sure its not cosmoline and grease stopping the bolt moving freely and its the primers there are ways to fix your problem. You can machine the bolt itself and insert a screw to push and hold the firing pin away from the round after firing.

Or you could just buy a bolt or send in yours for alteration by Murray's Guns and pretty much end any problems of slamfires in the future and allow you to use weak primers domestic rounds.

 

[dmckean44]

Sending the firing pin to Murray's for the return spring modification is the safest thing to do if you plan on shooting commercial ammo in it.

 

[BoySetsTheFire]

Since you said the pin floats freely, I would suspect that the hammer is falling off the sear. This is not uncommon and would explain why releasing the bolt would cause the gun to fire with a free floating firing pin. That is actually an easy fix. You can file a small arc in the sear to prevent positive slip. I would have a gunsmith do that, but do-it-yourselfers could easily do it. Instructions are available at some SKS websites.

And you can easily test this to make sure it is not a primer problem. Pull the slide back (unloaded of course) with the magazine unlatched. Let the bolt go fully forward. Try the trigger to make sure it is still cocked. If it is no longer cocked, then the sear is your problem and not the primers. If it remains cocked, then drop the butt onto a carpeted floor and see if the trigger falls. Slap it around, bang it around to see if you can make the trigger fall. If you cant make the trigger fall, then it is a primer problem. If so, just buy cheap Wolf ammo or name brand brass ammo - problem solved.

 

[Seancass]

for the record, the gun in question was returned to seller and my SKS has never missfired, but thanks for the advice for anyone who is reading the thread with similar problems.

 

[jjohnson]

Yeah, but....

Come on, admit it, it WAS fun though, once you got past the shock of going full auto? Kinda like getting free sex unexpectedly? Well, almost?

 

[Chipperman]

Yeah, until you're getting more free sex in the Fed Pen.

 

[ball3006]

My 59/66 went full auto....

once. A piece of pierced primer jammed the firing pin and the rest of the mag wend down range. I was surprised how controllable the rifle was. That big lug of a grenade launcher probably helped........chris3