Zastava M70 pistol Opinions

Would it be possible to retrofit/modify another.32acp magazine to work in the M70?

Perhaps cut a different magazine release cut?


I’m intrigued by the M70. RGuns is selling them with 2-magazines. Seems that should be sufficient for a range toy and curio.

Oddly, my most carried piece is my Keltec .32...

 

Triple K has some. Not cheap. I've read that they're hit and miss. I bought a few mags for my Astra A70 and those worked.

 

Wait really? I've been looking for A70 mags since I bought it, and have been really contemplating Triple K. Any issues with them?

By the by, I also recommend the Astra A70. Neat little workhorse.

 

Neither it's loaded hotter, or we respect it at all... Except for few "old timers", usually ex-military who never even saw anything different, that caliber is looked down upon - it's expensive, it has limited offerings, it's hard to find and handguns in that caliber are of old design, not particularly appealing to the most shooters. One simply does not want to waste his precious gun buying permit on a gun, such as this M70, which is a cheap mediocre plinker with expensive ammo that is hard to come by.

 

Well. Scrooge McGun convinced me to sell my M70.

In all fairness, you're right. It's just an obsolete cartridge. To me, it's just a fun little gun that lets me shoot with my baby sister.

 

I wouldn't call it "obsolete" yet, but it's headed into that direction.

 

Are we talking about the .32acp?.

Far from entering obsolescence.
Probably more rounds sold every year now than since it was introduced, except for military service. Of which It saw considerable.

Brass, bullets, are widely available. It’s my 2nd most shot and loaded, behind the 9mm.
It loads and fires in all my .32’s except the .30 Super Carry....

 

No problems with the ones I bought. Was a couple years ago.

 

Worked well! Thank you!

 

I really enjoy my M70 although i dont shoot it often. Its a minature verion of my 1939 Tula TT-33 and likewise extremely well built. By well built i mean tough as a tank, overbuilt and heavy. Accordingly recoil is light, like shooting a .22LR. Heck, some of the parts appear to be interchangeable with the TT-33. Its been years since i observed the cross matching parts, but i recall the hammer, mag relase and perhaps slide stop are the same. Maybe orher parts, too. Original mags are hard to find and pricey. Triple T makes repo mags. They are mediocre quality and must be "tuned" to work without jamming. Further the width of their repo followers are noticeably too narrow and contribute to jamming. Hand make a right sized follower and they are as reliable as oems. Mine is fairly accurate but i shoot my Colt 1903s much better.
M70s are cheap fun.

 

You're right about some parts being interchangeable, but just remember they're interchangeable only with the M57. IIRC, the mag release is the only interchangeable part, but I may be wrong.

 

Can't comment on interchangeability of the hammers, but the slide stop is of different design and dimensions - in M70 it's operated by an internal spring and plunger inside the guide rod and not with the external spring (AKA "bobby pin"), found on TT33 and it's clones.

 

I had seen extra barrels for these sold in various places. Since it really isn't fixed to frame, thought about getting one and having it threaded. But then I read about how blowbacks don't suppress well. Still investigating. After all, Beretta has a threaded Tomcat, Walthers have been known to get threaded. So who knows, still researching.

 

It certainly makes sense, if one is limited by government policy allowing only limited numbers of firearms to be purchased, not to use a permit for a firearm such as the M70. I get that. For me, at least in my state in the U.S., I'm not burdened by having to get a permit nor limited in amount of purchases.

Of course there are better choices for a .32acp platform, however I'm cost-constrained as of this year and in the future due to limited retirement finances, so for $225.00 this was a no-brainer purchase. This is my situation in the U.S. In the rest of the world I see how it wouldn't be realistic.

When I did have money the past three years it went into stocking up on ammunition, not firearms. Now have a very good supply of ammo in the calibers I use, even including .32acp as of last month. Probably enough for the decade, even. It helped that Privi Partizan (PPU) is the cheapest "reloadable" good quality ammunition I've ever found available in America

May well have an entire month's output of the Privi factory stockpiled for the firearm calibers I use.

Another big reason I stockpiled ammunition from Privi is that the price of imports won't always be favorable for U.S. dollar denominated stuff once the world starts weaning itself off of dollar dependence.

The consideration about why I bought a .32 is age related. I'm in my 7th decade of life and while not arthritic or strength limited yet, I do want to have a .32 as a low recoil choice available as I age. That said, I'll continue blasting away with .45acp in my GI .45 as long as I can.

 

The only reason I say that particular part is interchangeable is experience. There was a period of maybe 4 months where i had both the M70 and M57, and managed to change that one specific part, the Mag Release. Everything else, like the firing pin, is the same part but smaller.

Well, not everything exactly, but you get my point.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm not bashing on .32 ACP in any way. Actually, I have a soft spot for pistols in that caliber - it's just that I like to be realistic as possible and that cartridge, unfortunately, has slowly started to fade away in favor of more potent ones. Both in Europe and in the US - just an observation of the sad truth, so to speak.

 

I beg to differ. This thread has added an M70 to my list.

 

Triple K magazines makes a current production mag for the CZ50 and 70. They work just fine at almost half the cost of an original one.

 

I

I recently looked up the Zastava M70. Somewhere a hair north of $42. I'm hoping they'll drop a little. I know I didn't pay that much for my Astra A70 mags. Going to double check. Unless I edit otherwise, that's where they stand currently.

 

JCooperfan1911: the weaker .380 ammo in the US, designed by lawyers (?), is why my Walther PPK/S required a slightly weaker recoil spring.

It suddenly was very reliable with the weaker spring from Wolff .

My .32 acp Sauer 38H is extremely reliable and fun to shoot, but the price of .32 acp ammo over the last seven (+) years has kept the gun idle most of the time.

The seller's uncle had "...liberated it from a German nurse", in WW2.

It can be refreshing to hear the truth, vs. gun show stories such as " I ---seem to remember --- that it was Taken from an SS Major".

 

I love shooting .32 because it’s got the sound and overall feel of a “real” centerfire pistol, but it’s pleasant and has mild recoil. I also enjoy the neat, old, interesting, and curious-looking guns that are chambered in it. I don’t enjoy the price, and if I were limited to a certain number of guns by permitting rules, I would also probably forego the .32 unless I had a very historically significant example. .32 would be cheap to reload but I hate chasing brass that small.

 

I have more .32 than I'll ever use so I am more than happy to adopt any of those starving .32s.

 

Just for accuracy purposes -it is “Prvi”, not “Privi” , and it means “first” in Serbo-Croatian language.
PPU is short for Prvi Partizan Užice ,where Užice is city in Serbia ( ex-Yugoslavia)
Cheers

 

Don't know about the Triple K magazine's, but anyone with a CZ50 and or CZ70 can pick up magazine's for them at DK Firearms. These magazine's are too small for the Zastava M70, as the gun was intended and built around the .380. That's probably why they have the indent along he side of the magazine to accommodate the smaller .32 acp cartridge. Thinking that's why the Tomcat extensions work so good.
The magazine's at DK are CZ manufacture and fit great in my CZ70, even hold the slide back.
https://dkfirearms.com/product/cz-50-70-32acp-8-round-magazine-new-czech-mfg/

 

Thank you sir!