9" ak pistol issues solved...

[stilly]

Hey now!

I went to an AK-Team BP and made a 9" pistol out of a kit that I got from ak-builder.net and had two issues with it. The FIRST issue was that dust cover was flying off on every shot. The second issue was that the gas piston was jumping out the back and hanging up on the back of the front sight/gas block. SO, I followed Curtis's directions and filed down the hole a little on the bottom of the receiver cover and THAT fixed the problem with the dust cover flying off. I still had the hangups and today I fired it with TWO different springs. The FIRST spring was a NEW unissued Polish AK-47 recoil assembly. It performed FLAWLESSLY for about 250 rounds. I got to make several slow mo movies with it. The second spring was a NEW GUNSPRINGS/Wolf Springs AK-47 Recoil + 10lb spring. That spring ALSO got hungup after about 9 shots. (the slo mo video shows it). What I do not get though is that THAT spring had a longer length then the original spring. Longer by about 2 inches. Why did that occur?

Anyways, I switched back to the Polish spring and fired another 40 rounds with no hangups SO I think it is safe to say that the Polish spring wins this round, BUT why did a brand new wolff spring fail to fix the problem? BTW, I had buffers with each spring, but the buffers were diffrerent. I THINK I have fixed the problem but I would like to slap my 75 round drum on it to test it out, I think that is also a bit illegal in commiefornia so perhaps I will let my friend take it out to havasu and blast it.

I am going to e-mail wolf and ask why their spring failed me. I think maybe I will cut up my old spring to various sizes and put it onto the new wolf spring also. (as Caiman suggested I do).

So perhaps the recoil spring that came with the kit WAS indeed very worn (for a pistol kit anyways) but the new spring I THOUGHT should have performed fine where instead it just failed...

[stilly]

Any ideas why the higher powered spring from wolff springs does not solve this issue?

[antix2]

It doesn't seem to me that spring is 'higher powered'. It might have been sold to you as such but the Polish must be even 'higher powered' then. I built a gun on the same kit and I also had to soften the edge to keep the piston from hanging. That and using one of those much debated buffers. Regardless, if you're shooting 250 rnds of mil surp ammo with no fails you're having a good day!

[1lowluv]

So can we get some pics of this beauty?

[Gowking]

BTW, I had buffers with each spring, but the buffers were different.

Not a clean eval between the two springs IMO. You have 2 variable in each test. Try using one buffer with each spring and see what happens. Then try using the second buffer with each spring and see what happens. The results should yield the optimal results that you may be missing.

-MRA

[stilly]

So can we get some pics of this beauty?

The red buffer is the NEW buffer with the wolf spring.
The black buffer is the polish spring and buffer that came with the pistol kit.

I had tried the red buffer and the black on the original spring but they both had the same effect.

I have made some really cool slow motion movies with it too but I am still getting my intro together before I start upping them to you-tube. Sadly I can not afford a DECENT high res super slow camera (about $8k +) so I have to make do with my casio exilim that shoots about 120 and 240 fps while having a decent size movie. If I shoot at 480 fps I need a lot more light because of how noisy the footage is, I also will have a smaller res Like, WAY smaller. Certainly nowhere near 640x480...

[stilly]

Not a clean eval between the two springs IMO. You have 2 variable in each test. Try using one buffer with each spring and see what happens. Then try using the second buffer with each spring and see what happens. The results should yield the optimal results that you may be missing.

-MRA

Yes, you are correct in this. I did not have time to pull them apart and swap out the buffers BUT, my hypothesis is that I will have the same results because I think it is the spring and not the buffer that makes the distance change. I just want a FOOLPROOF way because I KNOW that when I REALLY need it to function, it is gonna jam on me and I might not have the dexterity or tool to jam up under the receiver cover and unstick it. I can also make a move to a guiderod type of setup but I did not want to have to do that.

THe buffers are also a PITA to pull off once they have been shot, SO, I think I will swap the buffers at home and then go out and shoot some more test rounds. I have about 4k rounds of milsurp. Back when Turners had them for like, $89 per 1440 I bought about 3 cases of the Rusky HP lacquered case stuff. LoL, it said it was HUNTING ammo... Well, I AM hunting for results... Anyways, when I shoot it next time I will have the buffers swapped and we will see what happens. I will post the movies here too hopefully soon...

[mr.]

The reason to use the buffer is to stop the piston from coming out of the gas tube/fsb and getting hung up right?

[mdib870]

over gassed pistol maybe ? you could try bleading off some more of that gas ...get another gas tube then try drilling small holes like of the earlier style ak gas tubes that the early norinco had