www.MG42.us

anyone know of a way to get the yugo ammo to fire consistantly? its fires every shot in my mauser but still the occasional ftf in the '34.

I'm not sure you will be able to. If your getting good strikes on the primer, you have a bad primer. My understanding is the Yugo ammo is 1960's era ammo, so it is old. I haven't had a primer malfunction in my Yugo ammo, but I have noticed a difference in the charge from round to round which tells me the primer isn't hot enough OR the powder has decayed. This is not atypical for old ammo.

As jbaum will most likely laugh, he always says he is amazed that everyone has such nice guns and then shoots cheap ammo in them. Sorry jbaum, not stealing your thunder, just paying homage to your wisdom.

Hope this helps!

Tom

PS We need to chat about the MG34 jig you scored.

which batch of yugo are you shooting? there is early to mid fifties, 70s and 80s and 90s out there in quantity. - matt

Usually the problem with old Yugo ammo is that the primers are hard and seem to be recessed in the cases a bit far. Light strikes by the firing pin often cause failures to fire.

sharmanajusmc wrote:anyone know of a way to get the yugo ammo to fire consistantly? its fires every shot in my mauser but still the occasional ftf in the '34.

I was told you could turn the shoulder of the firing pin back to allow more protrusion past the face of the bolt which would solve the light hits on the Yugo primer. I have not tried this mainly because I have a good stock of Romanian 8mm and I rarely shoot my 34. However it stands to reason this would work.

Buy a SPARE firing pin first!

DARIVS ARCHITECTVS wrote:Buy a SPARE firing pin first!

Not a problem, I have about 25 or 30.

sell me one or two my tnw breaks them often. i have a firing pin that was turned down a bit by a smith and it never fails to fire the yugo hard/recessed primers.

can you tell me how much I would need to turn the shoulder down to avoid puncturing the primers, I also had this idea but I'd hate to take too much off...

oh and whats a fair price for a firing pin in good shape? I'm goin to the next gunshow here in phoenix so I'm sure I'll find one there but on GB they seem to be around 70-80, is that a good price or the usual gunbroker markup?

Wow, how often do you guys with the tnw or semi guns break firing pins? I have a C&R Full auto MG34, and I just broke one at the OFASTS shoot 2 weeks ago again; that's 3 in mulitple 1000's of rounds, probably almost 10k. I am surprised at the huge amount of machining that went into making a firing pin where mine have broken in the same place every time; the tip, without making that replaceable somehow!!! You would think that as carefully designed at the whole thing is, that there would be a replaceable tip, which would be easy to make!!! German engineering at its finest!

I love shooting my MG34. It's one of my favorite guns now that I've got the bugs worked out of it. Runs great on the 1950s Yugo, or the Romanian; really shockingly well on the old Portugese 8mm ammo. I had the occasional primer just flat blow out / apart on the Yugo though; just followed WWII procedure, changed barrels, to let the one with the stuck case cool down- and kept right on shooting.

I've seen MG34 firing pins with replaceable tips before. They were modified during the war. Never shot one though. TNW guns seem to be hard on parts for some reason. I've damaged quite a few through normal shooting. Mostly with Romanian ammo, some yugo. The pins I had machined had .012 inches removed on one bolt and .008 on another bolt. Not sure why the difference. - Matt