I have been having a persistent, if sporadic, failure to extract in my M1A Socom II.
I wondered if it were operator error — perhaps I was not shouldering the rifle properly, like “limp-wristing” a handgun? — but tonight I noticed little crumbly gobs of what appears to be brass on the thingy at the bottom of the boltface (on the left in the below photos due to rotation) — is that the extractor?
Compare to a Garand boltface, where the same part is smooth and literally gunmetal gray:
I will commence to scraping and see tomorrow if that cured the problem.
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I don’t own a Garand or an M1A yet. Both are on my list. Even figured out the club to join for CMP. Keep us posted on what you figure out, I’m interested to hear it.
Oddly enough, the brass flakes came off with a toothbrush. Just clean steel now. I have no idea what was going on. The inside of the magwell was also liberally dusted with shiny gold-brass flecks; I wiped them out too.
What brand of ammo are you putting through it?
Radway Green 7.62 NATO milsurp in sealed battle packs on stripper clips.
Do you hold on to your expended brass? Might be worthwhile to inspect a few rounds before and after to see where the brass shavings are coming from. Could be scraping across a feed ramp while going back into battery, could be the extractor gouging out little flakes from the cartridge rim. I’m sure there are other things it could be as well. I love a good puzzle but the location of this one is somewhat inconvenient and my knowledge in this field is still lacking…
I’ve got a case of Radway 7.62 and was having somewhat of the same problem in my M1A. Mine was, pardon the expression, “short stroking”. The bolt wasn’t coming back far enough to eject the brass. Got a feeling the ammo is underpowered. Either bad powder or not enough. Was going to chrono the ammo but never got around to it. South African and Portuguese ran fine. Didn’t have any trouble with brass flakes tho. It reloads fine.
Jack
In those two photos the extractor is at the top of the picture. If the weapon was upright the extractor would be centered at about 10 O’Clock (facing the bolt, from the rear it’s at 2 o’clock). The ‘button’ sticking out from the bolt face is the ejector, the ejector operates as the mouth of the cartridge clears the back of the chamber. You should check that the gas valve is fully open.
M1A bolt face is a photo of an M1A bolt face. The large empty place on the left is where the Extractor lives, the large hole is where the ejector lives.
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