What to do with 3rd Gen Universal M1 Carbine

[MrAndrew47]

Hi Everyone,

My father bought a 3rd Gen (serial# 28X,XXX) in the late 70's and it's had a few rounds through it in the last ~10 years. I fired it ~10 years ago and it was firing just fine. It's in excellent condition. I just picked it up from him and added it to my own collection. I've been reading a lot about issues with it firing out of battery. The gun is free to me, so i don't really care if it's junk, i just don't want it to blow up in my face.

I'm going to strip it and it'll look at the bolt face to make sure it's not flattened, I'll look at the slide to make sure it's not cracked. I'll also make a habit of checking to make sure the bolt is closed completely before firing for the first 100 rounds. What else should i do to make sure it's safe? Do i really need to check headspace?

Andrew

 

[rondog]

Join up at the CMP forum and milsurps.com, tons of carbine knowledge there, even the commercial carbines like yours. Probably wouldn't hurt to put a Wolff recoil spring in it too.

 

[kenno]

I had a Universal and never experienced these problems, I can't see how a bolt face could be flattened by the 30 Carbine round unless the bolt was dead soft metal. Firing out of battery would invoulve an out of spec bottom reciever bridge which acts as a safety and cams the fireing pin rearward during the recoil cycle and blocks it when out of batttery. It seems to me that out of spec reloaded ammo or dirty chambers would also be a likely cause if indeed an individual gun could fire out of battery. I would also suspect a Universal that was modified to fire FA, carbines do strange things when cycling at 1100 rounds a minute.

 

[Jubjub]

Install a new set of Wolff recoil springs. They are quite a bit stronger, and make the rifle cycle more briskly. Both of my rifles have them, and run flawlessly. They drop brass a couple of feet behind my right shoulder, not back in the woods.