Slamfire in My Makarov Today.

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ezypikns

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Shooting today at an outdoor range. I took my Bulgarian Mak out and got ready to shoot. When I inserted the loaded mag and released the slide stop forward to put the first round into battery the thing fired. Only once though. Thank goodness it didn't go full auto or anything like that. The pistol was firmly gripped and pointed straight down range so no harm was done to anything except my confidence in the pistol.
I did look on THR and found a post by Highroader BamBam-31. His experience was ten times worse than mine (wounded in the hand). I also found a lot of info regarding stuck firing pins on Makarovs and I suspect that was my problem too. I'm aware of stuck firing pins causing the same kind of problems on SKS's.
In the meantime, my Mak gets a complete stripping and cleaning. And I stll don't know whether I'll ever fully trust it again.
Has anybody else had similar experiences?
 
Hello, Ezypikns. May I suggest first to have a gunsmith check the sear and hammer for some wear in the engagement surfaces. My personal observation is that the firing pin of Makarov is quite hard to wedge - you will need lots of fouling in the firing pin channel to do that...
 
Nope. Never a hiccup with any Mak.

Could the firing pin channel have been dirty, clogged, or blocked?
Click to expand...
I've seen my share of hiccups with them.
Most usually arise from a problem with the safety or something with the firing pin. As Mizar pointed out, usually the pins have more of a problem not coming forward once struck, rather than wedging, if the channel or pin is dirty. It could still be feasible that the pin channel is obstructed by something though, and caused the pin to stick out of the face a bit. It could also be the pin could be bent or otherwise out of spec for some reason. Take the slide off, hold it so the firing pin is vertical, and shake it a little. The pin ought to shake freely. If it doesn't, you need to check it out. You can remove the pin by flipping the safety all they way up (might take some force), and then removing it. That'll let the pin out. Look for some more detailed instructions if you don't know what I'm talking about. Once it's out, take the opportunity to clean the pin and the channel (pipe cleaners work pretty well). Inspect the pin and re-assemble. If that doesn't do it, have it looked at.

Jason
 
Take the slide off, hold it so the firing pin is vertical, and shake it a little. The pin ought to shake freely.
Click to expand...

Good advice. You really don't need to take the slide off either. I shake mine and can hear the pin.

You can get a new sear from Makarov.com very cheap I'm sure. Might replace it just in case.
 
Well Fletch, it looks like we may need to form a "Never had a Makarov malfunction" group...
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It's the only auto I have that has never had any sort of malfunction. It also has the most rounds through it - great gun :)
 
Removed the firing pin.

I am ashamed to say that I have never had one of my firearms so filthy. Gunk on the firing pin itself and in the channel. Now it rattles like it's supposed to (it didn't before).
 
Don't be ashamed... be glad you found out what the problem was... plus pointed it out to others of us that shoot Maks. Cleaning the firing pin channel isn't something normally done in a "after shooting cleanup", so paying a little more attention to that feature will make all of us safer.

WT
 
Еzypikns, slam fire is more often caused from bad machined or worned sear and/or hammer, especialy in Makarov. As I said before - it is REALY hard for the firing pin in this pistol to get struck in such a way, that it would start igniting primers. It is more of a gun-folklore, trying to explain something in the wrong way...
 
Victory is mine! ;)

Actually, once you said that it happened once, and not every time (or often), led me to believe it was dirt/gunk in the channel. Had it been a faulty sear or out of spec firing pin (or other part) it probably would have happened more often.

Fortunately, the firing pin on Mak's are easy to remove and clean.
 
Just to satisfy my curiousity......

wouldn't a worn sear allow the hammer to follow the slide down when I release the slide? And if this were the case (worn sear), wouldn't it be likely to happen more than once, and possibly with more frequency as the wear progresses? By the way, that's never happend with this firearm.
 
I am ashamed to say that I have never had one of my firearms so filthy. Gunk on the firing pin itself and in the channel. Now it rattles like it's supposed to (it didn't before).
Click to expand...
So is it running like it's supposed to now?
Be extra cautious about chambering it until you know it's going to do so without setting one off.

Jason
 
Can i join the "No Makarov malfunctions" club? I'm down to 6 of them but have owned more. The only problem I've ever seen was with a troublesome safety that would partially engage and prevent the pistol from firing. I replaced the safety and had no more problems.

I never use the slide stop to let the slide chamber a round. Those parts have a limited useful life and I don't want to wear them out. I pull the slide back slightly, disengage the slide stop, and let the slide spring forward.
 
Always.
Quote:
Be extra cautious about chambering it until you know it's going to do so without setting one off.
Thanks. It never hurts to say that.
Click to expand...
Well it sounded from your earlier post that you know what you're doing, since you were pointing the gun downrange when the slamfire happened, and I don't like to beat the proverbial dead horse, but you never know who else is reading this stuff. Just peruse the thread archives and look at the occasional ND threads that pop up. Far too many of them IMHO. Some folks either don't know any better or get lazy/thoughtless sometimes. Never hurts to be reminded I guess, just don't take my comment to mean that I thought you didn't know how to be safe, or that I would assume you to be reckless in any way. You just never know who has or hasn't been educated on gun safety.

So have you had a chance to test it out and make sure that there isn't anything else awry?

Jason
 
make sure that you get into the habit of shaking it vertically...you can hear the pin rattle when there is no round chambered
 
Out of curiousity, what kind of ammo were you using? IMO, that could very well have been a factor.

I've had no similar experiences with either of my Maks (Bulgie and IJ-70), but I really haven't put a lot of ammo through either compared to the volume my .45's and 9x19's see.

The reason I ask is that my only slamfire experience with a Com Bloc weapon was in an SKS and it was with non-milspec commercial ammo.

On releasing the bolt the non-inertial FP came forward with enough force to ignite the primer(s) and sent the whole mag downrange in one pants-filling burst. I stick to surplus and milspec only in it now.

As a good part of what ammo my Maks have seen has been commercial HPs (Hornady) and ball (CCI Blazer) with no similar issue, my best guess would be the sort of borderline faulty hammer/sear engagement previously mentioned.

I had a very similar episode happen to me with a new Llama .22 pistol many years ago. It blew a hole in the ground a few inches from the toe of my left boot when I dropped the slide (and no, my finger wasn't anywhere near the trigger; I'm a southpaw). It also "doubled" twice.

A detail stripping revealed sloppy fitting and most unusally "worn" looking parts in the lockwork, leaving only marginal sear engagement with the hammer. This allowed the hammer to sometimes disengage from the sear with just the impact of the slide returning to battery.

"Generous" tolerances, marginal materials and a good deal of wear led to much the same thing happening on an old AR-7. I had to replace all of the lockwork parts to make it quit throwing doubles.

If the SA trigger pull on your Mak seems to be a little too "sweet" for a military weapon, the sear/hammer engagement is the first place I'd look at. It isn't unusual for the lockwork parts on some Warsaw Pact weapons to be quite "soft", relatively speaking. Along with ham-handed initial fitting and "tolerance stacking" this can result in greatly accelerated wear to the engagement surfaces and cause the kind of incident you had.

IIWY, I'd have a knowledgable 'smith take a look at the lockwork and have him fit a new sear and/or hammer if necessary.
 
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