Zavastra anyone?

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wristtwister

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Zastava anyone?

One of my buddies put a Zastava 9mm in his store this week and I wondered if anybody has any history with them. The gun looked and felt okay, but I wondered if the manufacture was suspect or what? $225 is kind of a low priced 9, but the look and feel of the gun was pretty good.

It's manufactured in Serbia, and they certainly have plenty of warfare experience as of late, so I'm just curious if anyone out there has one and some information on how well it works.

WT

Sorry I mispelled the name in the original post...
 
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You didn't ask this question...but I'll chime in with it:

Where will I get parts for this gun?

I have 2 Zastava MD70s that work pretty good as paperweights because I can't find magazines, recoil springs, etc.

I'll never buy another gun, no matter the price or perceived value, if I don't know where replacement parts will come from.
 
I handled one at a gun show ~ a year ago and was impressed. If I closed my eyes I would have sworn it was my SIG P226. Since it is a pseudo 226 clone that is to be expected! Overall I thought the quality was excellent for the price (~$300).
 
I plan on getting one of the M88's as my next purchase, when I get that tax check. I found a place selling spare magazines for $15.
 
Call the company

Hoffy,
Charles Daly imports the guns and they have a lifetime warranty on all Charles Daly products (I don't know if it extends to their imported goods).
I suspect that if you don't doodle with the gun, they will fix it or send you the parts to fix it.

Their telephone number is 866-325-9486. Give them a call and let us know how it goes.

WT
 
wristtwister,

It could be true that parts are readily available for Zastava 9mms...I simply don't know.

I do know that Zastava MD70 (.32 acp) parts are unavailable in the US. The guys at makarov.com had a line on importing some magazines for these pistols, before they decided to close up shop. Thus, it will not come to pass. I'm only out about $200 on my two Zastavas, as I patiently wait for a "gun buy back" event where I can get rid of them. ;)

From this relatively inexpensive life's lesson, I learned to always ask the question before purchasing an "off brand" pistol: If I need parts for this gun, where will they come from? If you're confident that Charles Daly (or another outfit) is a reliable source of parts, it looks like you've got the green light to take the plunge (at least as far as that hurdle is concerned). :)
 
Use one up

If you've got two identical guns, use one for parts and fix the other one. That way you only need parts for one.

Unless the same parts broke on both guns, you should be able to "manufacture" one working model off two broken ones. If it's a "matching number" situation, your new repair parts won't have matching numbers anyway, so "junk one" and fix one. That would be my suggestion. If the same parts broke on both guns, I'd like to know what they are, because I'm still thinking about trying one out.

You might also try going back to the dealer where you bought the guns and see if they will trade them out for you. One of the reasons I deal with only one or two people in purchasing guns is that I know they will stand behind anything I buy. I took one back to the last gun show as a "basket case", and got a brand new gun for it... so see if you can get a little "customer service" from the dealer first, and if not him, call the Daly importer group.

WT
 
Arrrggggh....

Well, I finally broke down and bought the Zastava because it felt so good and seemed to be a solid pistol. The sight picture of the gun is very good... problem is, it doesn't shoot anywhere near where it's sighted, and they're not adjustable sights. They're hammered in place (brass shavings on the sight slides).

I ran about 50 rounds through it this afternoon, and I might as well have been throwing rocks. I pulled out my Sig P6 and stitched 8 straight into the center of the target, but the Zastava wasn't even close TO the target, much less ON the target. Never had that experience before with a new, out of the box pistol.

I'm going to work on it and see if I can get it shooting somewhere near the target... try some different ammo, etc. and see if it improves because it's particularly tight... but it's junk right out of the box. Even the clip was rough and needed to be steel-wooled before it would run properly.

If this is the Z part of CZ, I'll defer to the "C" group next time. It makes me mad that I lusted over this particular gun and it turned out to be junk. I'll do some more work on it, and see if I can get it up to speed, but I'm not particularly thrilled to have to be a gunsmith to get a new gun on the paper.

WT
 
A little emery cloth and oil seems to do wonders with this particular piece. As an old machine shop guy (shop in high school and college), the mating surfaces finish on this pistol are very rough... as is the finish on the magazine.

I took a bit of steel wool (very fine) and dressed down the mag, cleaned it with alcohol, and reblued the "shiny" areas, and it now feels and runs like one that was polished by a manufacturer... just doesn't have the nice, hard finish that usually comes on them.

The rails and slide were a bit more of a challenge. Rather than using valve compound, I used flats of emery paper (1000 grit) and lightly wore the ridge down on the frame, and polished the hammer pieces as well. We'll see if that cures the problems, but it looks like the "finish work" on the pistol is what's missing.

I put my bore sighter in the gun last night, and according to that, the sights are lined up, so it might be a muscle or handling problem on my part that's causing my aiming problem with the gun... but I don't have that problem with others, so it makes me wonder. The grip's a bit smaller, so I might be gripping it differently (too strong at the base) but it shot all over the place and not at the target yesterday. I dressed up the front sight with a little paint to make it more visible because the sights on this thing are horrible... like looking for the edge of a playing card.

Anyway, well see next week. I plan to dry fire it just to make the mechanical parts wear together without going bang, and see if that helps them work together better when they do.

WT
 
The Zastava Risk...

Before you buy a gun you should ask yourself "What am I buying it for?"... Home protection, CCW, targeting/plinking etc... This comes BEFORE looks, hand-fit, shooting, $$, etc... If I'm looking for protection, I want QUALITY and DEPENDABILITY... No FTFs, No jam-ups, No FTEs, NOTHING!! But I also know that anything made by man and machine has the potential to break and/or malfunction... a $75,000 Mercedes Benz can 'screw-up' but the rates and %s are VERY LOW... and that's what I want in a gun! HOFFY 'nailed-it'... if you can't get parts and good service/warranty work, the GUN IS WORTHLESS and at best, becomes a pretty 'paper-weight!"
Also, what is very hard to understand, is the MONEY factor!... the Zastavas sell for about $350 (which is good money)... and with the dozens of great guns and manufacturers out there, with a proven quality product, with substantial warrenties and customer service, in the SAME price range... WHY ZASTAVA????
Ultimately, everyone makes their own buying-decision... but somehow if I had $400 and wanted a gun for personal protection, and needed reliability, dependability and quality, I honestly don't think I'd choose a Zastava!... Sorry. But if I just wanted a 'targeting' gun for $250, maybe... but then again, you can get a dependable, quality RUGER MARK for that money!
 
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Well, to start with, how I spend my "gun money" is really my business. I bought this gun because I thought it was interesting. It felt good in the hand, and unlike a marriage, if it's that bad, I'll trade it or sell it. I've got lots of guns, and always looking for more. To be honest, I just found the gun to "have potential"... now that I've got it and have had it apart several times, I have more input for the decision.

The machine work on this gun looks like it was done with a hammer and chisel... rough edges everywhere, and rough mating surfaces... lots of "machine marks". Now that I've used my jeweler's files and some emery cloth, the gun runs much smoother without ammo, and I'm sure that it will run better with ammo. The sights still suck, but I'll approach that problem from a different direction. I assume that the "pull" of the gun was from the slide driving the gun in a sideways direction from the rough mating surfaces between the slide and frame.

Mechanically, the gun seems tighter than some of my expensive guns... but with poor surface finish work, it might take the rest of my lifetime for it to "break in" without help. I certainly wouldn't recommend the gun for anyone who didn't have some gunsmithing skills in smoothing out rough metal surfaces.

If you bought a Zastava for $350, you did get stiffed... by about $100. They sell here for $250 new in the box.

As for parts, there are thousands of machine shops around that can manufacture a part for you... or go to a community college shop class and have them "do a project". It isn't illegal to manufacture gun parts "unregistered" except for the frames and receivers... so if you have a broken part, take it to a machine shop and have it made. It'll cost you some money, but nothing is impossible in America... or find someone else who has a broken one and use their parts. Half the 1911's out there were assembled from "bin" parts until the patents ran out and they could be manufactured by any gun manufacturer.

The more I dry fire this particular gun, the smoother it seems to run now that I've worked on it, and I'll probably have several other sessions of "feeling the inside" to find rough edges before I take it back to the range. A little emery cloth, maybe some valve grinding compound, and I'll have the mating surfaces of this puppy as smoothe as glass when it starts feeding ammo again.

If it didn't do anything else for me, it made me take the steel wool and emery cloth to all my other guns when I was cleaning them to de-burr the slide tracks and feeding ramps. All my guns benefitted from this purchase.

WT
 
The pistol is an M88A imported by European American Armory Corp., Rockledge Florida.

The rough parts I was discussing earlier are inside the gun... not the exterior finish. That looks fine and it's a very nice looking gun... it's just rough inside, where it counts... a lot of tool marks and rough edges. It's entirely possible I bought the one of the two in the store that was like that, but both looked the same except for the brass filings on the front sight of the other one where the sight was hammered in place.

WT
 
People seem to get hung up on "gun parts". Springs are springs... and spring manufacturers only need to know what length, spring rate, and diameter you need for a "duplicate". They wind wire springs for all kinds of uses, and guns just happen to be one of them.

Measure the spring you need or look up the specs in the owners manual or on the manufacturer's website and order another one. I can promise you that a spring manufacturer doesn't care if that spring is going on a gun or a Mercedes. They sell "springs", not "gun parts".

As for the other parts, if you have 2 guns, take the parts off one and fix the other one. Unless the same part broke on both guns, you should be able to cobble together a working piece and one that needs parts.

Quite often, springs manufactured for other guns will fit your gun as well. You just have to do a bit of investigating to make sure the parts will work. It would be nice if there were "standard parts", but since there aren't, you can only work with the specifications of the parts you need.

WT
 
The M88 is a Tok clone, which means it's really really old technology. It's one reliable handgun. After about 1k rounds through the bugger, I haven't had a singer FTF, jam, or anything. Accuracy, however, is not great by any means. The bullets go in the general direction of where you're shooting, but it's far from a tack driver. I've been able to get a 4" group at 15 feet at best, but haven't been able to replicate that since.

Per the poster above bashing Zastava, I think you're bashing something that you don't really know much about. These guys have been making extremely high quality firearms for years and years. Their mausers are excellent rifles, even being imported by Remington. The SKSs are regarded as the highest quality SKSs on the market. The M70 AKs are also considered to be top notch. Their 8mm SVD-style rifle is insanely good. The Serbs make some damn fine weapons, and the M88 is no different. It's just not intended to be a match winning firearm.
 
If you'll read my posts over, you'll find that the only thing I've complained about is the machining on the gun. Rough surfaces and machine marks that have ridges cause any gun to cycle improperly, and this one has been especially rough on the mating surfaces that should be smoothe.

As for not knowing what I'm talking about, I've worked in mechanical engineering for about 40 years, and while I've only been shooting about 50 years... I'm sure you know more about this particular gun and company. How many M88's do you own?

It's a $250 gun with, at best, $100 machining on the inside. That is and has been my only complaint. I would prefer the bullets go where I aim them, rather than just in the general direction. My other $250 guns don't seem to have this problem, so why should the Serbians get a pass? My $200 Makarov shoots circles around this toy, as does my PA-63, and given the choice, I'd buy another Mak or FEG in a minute.

I'll see if this one does better after I've cleaned up the machine work and put some decent sights on it. I suspect it will shoot "cleaner" than out of the box just from the smoothing process I've already done, but we'll see when I go back to the range.

WT
 
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