M1A Failure to Feed or Cycle

[Grumulkin]

I have a National Match M1A which, until recently, has never failed to shoot anything I've given it. Now, far too often, it fails to strip a round off the magazine, fails to touch off a round in the chamber and has even failed to cycle at all when a round was touched off. Accuracy also seems to have fallen off dramatically.

I've cleaned the gas cylinder, the gas plug and the gas piston. There was some carbon buildup but I'm not sure if it was enough to prevent reliable functioning. After the cleaning, I put 10 rounds through it without a malfuncton. Today out of 10 rounds I would say half or less cycled the action as they are supposed to.

Any suggestions?

 

[Jim K]

Did you check the gas port and clean the inside of the piston? Also the fit of the cylinder to see if there are any gas leaks.

It should be needless to say, but what about the ammo?

Jim

 

[Grumulkin]

I did clean the inside of the piston.

The cylinder seems to fit well.

I did check the gas port and it seemed OK.

I've shot the same type of ammo in it many times dithout a problem.

I have ordered special tools to clean the gas cylinder and have ordered a new piston. Hopefully something I do will help. The gun acts like something is plugged up.

 

[Kp321]

Mine was doing the same thing, ended up being a dirty chamber. Took some aggressive cleaning with the special chamber brush to get it going again. One of the hazards of having to clean from the muzzle is a dirty chamber.

 

[Grumulkin]

I'll double check the chamber but I doubt that's it. It gets cleaned regularly to bare metal with Wipe Out; i.e., until the cleaning patches come out perfectly white. I haven't taken a chamber brush to it for awhile though so I'll give that a try.