saiga 12 chambering issues

[fzr confused]

my saiga 12 does not like to chamber very well, it is very picky. it has been like this since day one. now while shooting it at the range, it cycles them fine, but chambering the first round is a pain. i am using AGP arms 10rd mags from mississippi arms and it happens with each of the mags, even the original 5rd mag. is this common for these guns?

[69ranchero351c]

mine doesnt do it. but i do have a problrm with my agp 10 rounder when theres about 3 left in the mag it will not feed unless i use remington green hull ammo then it feeds fine.

does yours have the bolt hold open and are you just pullin the bolt back a lettin go? and what does it jam on, the top of the barrel?

[fzr confused]

I just pull the bolt back and then it go, mine rarely stays open. When the bolt tries to close the round does not seem to be tilted enough to go into the chamber. If I push up on the shell while holding the bolt open it will chamber fine. When firing it it cycles fine though. I realize the force from firing it is greater than just pulling the bolt back, but the ramp just doesn't seem to match up.

[fooschnickens]

Sounds like grinding/polishing the feed ramp is your ticket to success.

[DarkWater]

take a look on the saiga 12 forum, i bet there is some info out there. i have found lots of good advice there...

[fzr confused]

I'll try and look around later on my computer. I always forget about the problem until I clean it or whatever and go to reload it and am like WTF!?!?!? Lol. I'll take a few pics as well to show how far off the feed ramp is.

[fzr confused]

it was kinda hard to get good pics, but here is the best i could do. after i hand cycled a few through it, it did not jam a single time. it seems to be when the mag is full it does not push the front of the round up enough and it jams. but like i said, after i started to cycle them it didnt jam for another 40 rounds.





and on this one, it chambers properly

[fooschnickens]

Sounds like filing down the feed ramp will help.

Can you take some more pics with the dust cover off? Might be able to get a better angle on the bolt assembly.

[fzr confused]

of course all of them cycled fine so i couldnt get a pic of how it looks when its not pointed correctly, but here is what i got.



and here i can see a lip that i could file down.

[fooschnickens]

Get a flashlight (or other large light source) and shine it into the chamber then turn off your flash, it's washing out the image and making it a bit difficult to see the feed ramp.

That said, it does look like it's chewing a fair bit of material off the shells as it cycles.

Have you tried different ammo? I know my buddy's saiga would only reliably cycle a handful of shells.

[fzr confused]

I'll give that a try later today. I suck at taking pics.

It has this problem with any round, but like I said at the range it chambers fine every time when fired.