[hcpookie]

Finally took my '74 build to the range & put it through its paces. The soft Vulcan ejector problem still needs to be fixed, and I plan to do this later. What I have discovered, TODAY, is that the bullets fail to feed from the magazine. It looks as if the rear of the magazine does not lock as deeply into the magazine well as it should. I attribute this to the filing work I did to the magazine release lever to allow the mags to fit into this POS receiver.

I narrowed this down by careful examination & discovered that applying additional pressure to the front of the magazine would "seat" the magazine more deeply into the well... the next step was to anchor the front of the mag against the bench, firmly press my shoulder against the buttstock, then proceed to fire 3 mags worth of ammo without a hitch. The way I anchored this caused the magazine to seat more deeply in the mag well, and this confirms to me that the magazine needs to be inserted more deeply.

The front of the magazine very tightly seats against the lower rails. In fact, I would like to see the front trunion's magazine "tab" moved downward some to allow the front of the mags more space, but it should work OK.


Question: Does this plan sound feasible, or is there an alternative that I have yet to consider... ? Here's my idea: I believe I can resolve this issue by replacing the magazine release lever and removing less material on the replacement. I am thinking an alternative will be to get my friend to TIG a bead across the top, then dremel that down some, thereby eliminating the need to buy a new mag release lever.



I swear I will never use a Vulcan receiver (or whatever they call themselves now) ever again. The main issue was the trunion holes, and my work to enlarge these holes has introduced this additional alignment problem with the mag well, so I have basically moved the problem. :dunno:

 

[hcpookie]

FWIW, I read on the other thread about the safety stop being in the way, but this is NOT the case with mine. Upon more careful examination last night it does look like I got a little too happy with the dremel when I took off the extra material on the magazine release lever. I'm going to have my friend weld a bead over that area and have another go at it.

I took some pics to illustrate my issue, and will put them up shortly.

 

[hcpookie]

Pics here...

http://pookieweb.dyndns.org:61129/AK74/magrelease/magrelease.htm

 

[redneck_riveter]

have you thought of using a .223 follower in the mag to keep the tip of the bullets slightly higher? It may be enough to start em in the right direction if they are hanging up just a hair too low.

 

[hcpookie]

Hrm don't know what happened to my post, but I thought I put an update on this issue...

I found the safety stop is too THICK. So I filed it down to pull the trigger guard (and therefore the lever) closer to the receiver.

Now it hand-feeds 100%. Going to the range in a few weeks to test it out. Pics are up on my page.

 

[hotbarrel]

hcpookie
I realize this is kind of crude but this is what I did one time. I did not want to file the lock down so I took a fairly large punch , held the lock at 90 degrees to the reciever, put the punch in and gave it one good wack. the mag now fit fine and the lock snapped in to position. nouthing showes, but man that tiny bit realy made a differance.
Now dont get me wrong I guess I do not recomend this over the full removal and resizeing but it worked fine and only took a few seconds.... now I could not even figure out what one I did it to by looking.

 

[Winn R]

Jerry--

Had something similar one time but with the Hesse receiver with the premade trigger guard.

I also took the trigger guard off and reduced the thickness of the selector stop plate thereby raising the rear of the magazine in the receiver.

It fixed the problem.

 

[mike26038]

I had the same problem on a Krink.. I built up the top of the magazine release lever with JB weld. Then used a fingernail file to countor, and fit the mag in.. It worked fine for 500 rounds for me, and 500 for the guy I sold it to so far....