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.
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…