This is your last chance to win this awesome (if malfunctioning) Shughart M14 Clone!
https://www.fanathem.com/forgottenweapons
DEADLINE to ENTER is TONIGHT 09/27/2024 @ 11:59 PM PST
Today I decided to do a Gothic Serpent memorial 2-gun match, using my Shughart M14 clone and a surplussed Delta 1911. This was a 5-stage match at the Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club, and it was a complete dumpster fire for me. I don’t know what changed, but the reliable-in-testing M1A became a complete malfunction machine on the clock. I had trouble with the 1911 as well, also for the first time. Together, this landed me in dead last place…but at least I looked good doing it, I suppose?
The only reliability problem I ever had with an M-14 was with a couple of Korean magazines. Recoil would make them jump the mag catch. Possibly the gas cutoff is loose, and got partially engaged. Steel case ammo will also give problems after some of the coating gets stuck to the chamber wall.
My first guess is that you had a bent feed lip on the M14 magazine. Seemed to work for the first 5 to 10 rounds before starting to act up.
An anti-M60 rant in a thread about an M14? What do you do when your Big Mac is no good? Complain to Burger King? Hey, I think Taurus revolvers suck. Should I gripe about that here too?
Completely consonant with my experience of the M1A/M14. Works fine on the bench, take it to the match, the bitch starts acting up.
Buddy of mine had one of these that must have sucked up 20-30,000.00 worth of parts and work, over the years he tried making it work for him. Never added up his time to include, either. The M14 is just basically a cursed platform, for a lot of people. Even ones who “know” the rifle.
If you’ve got an AMU armorer behind you, the government paying for parts, and all the time in the world? By all means, it’s a great gun. If you’re some poor schmuck out on the pointy end of things, with no support and even less esoteric knowledge of the gun? Good ‘effing luck. You will wind up with a loathing for the platform that equals what I feel for the M60.
I still see that whole “thing” surrounding the 7.62 NATO and the M14/M60 as a war crime we perpetrated on our own troops. And, allies… I am never going to forget that Australian Warrant Officer who described the M60 as being something that should have been used as a casus belli between Australia and the United States, and likely the only thing that saved us from that was that we’d also adopted the damn thing…
There is one persone you can blame for that mess:MacArther. If only you adopted the 276 Pedersen in 1932. You have Bar for infantary rifle, a Bar for SAW and Bar (M240) for GPMG. You have the NGSW program in 1932! And if Dieudonné Saive did not mess up Browings design, there would have been a strikered fired Browning in 1935. Not only that but it would have been reversed rail like a sig210/cz75.
“(…)And if Dieudonné Saive did not mess up Browings design, there would have been a strikered fired Browning in 1935.(…)”
I am not sure if I agree with that, but what is linkage between described design (developed for French forces) and potential switch to .276 Pedersen (developed for U.S. forces)?
You really can’t blame FN for what they did with the Hi-Power… I seem to recall that the contract they were competing for required a hammer because they wanted a belt-and-suspenders approach for the pistol, and the ability to perform a second strike on a recalcitrant cartridge.
The point which escaped them was that it was probably a better idea to just eject and try another…
Blame McArthur for M14? Why not blame Arthur McArthur who sired him? Or the grandpa who fathered Arthur? You are blaming people for what exactly? Falling short of Nostradamus-like prescience? Childish nonsense.
120gr at 2550 fps. Do this trigger a thought. Maybe 122gr at 2329 fps. The laast one is the 7.62x39mm m43. The first is 276 Pedersen. The Pedersen is a intermediate cartridge that pre-date the M43 and even the 7.92X33mm Kurz. Not only that,it fire bullet with better ballistic coefficients. If the BAR was rechamered to 276 Pederson soldier might have found it perfectly controllable in fully automatic and used it as it was indended for: An assault rifle. We skip the M14 because of perfectly adequate BAR rifle. Then some one just need to come to there senses and turn BAR in a beltfed, what the FN MAG is. To complete the trinity you need a Glockish Browning. For that you need the Moses of firearms, John Moses Browning, original striker fired High Power design. Some people fail to see the humour.