M14 Forum

Pomeroy

I have recently come into possession of an M1 Garand that had been converted to .308. The former owner has quite a few Garands and is very well informed about their history. He indicated that one branch of the military converted some Garands to .308 so they could use the same ammo supplied for the new M14. He said that conversion was accomplished on some rifles by driving a spacer into the 30/06 chamber so the .308 round would fit. He suggested that I stop firing and inspect the rifle if anything strange happens because some of the spacers have been known to move out of position.

Is this accurate? Can any of you folks add anything that might be of interest? Any additional information is appreciated.

The rifle shoots as well as my other Garands with the same ammo I reload for my M1A. I did get one of those magazine spacers so that I would not put a clip of 30/06 rounds in her accidently.

Gus Fisher

The Navy was the service that did it and yes, they began with an adaptor put in a .30-06 chamber. I have seen 12 pages of the original engineering drawings and data on it. Even as well thought out as it was, the adaptors came out/shot loose and were replaced. Then they went to a NEW barrel that was actually chambered originally for 7.62mm and were so marked in LARGE block letters on the barrels. The original ones had the same gas port as the .30-06 but it was found that was too small for correct functioning. So they went with a .106" diameter gas port, though the rifles will function fine with a .096" hole.

The Navy also supplied a white plastic spacer that wrapped around the bullet guide and the stock had to be slightly cut away for it. CONTRARY to the BS often quoted, this device was not for feeding but just so one would not load a clip of .30-06 ammo in the rifle. You don't need any kind of additional block for perfect feeding and functioning and ESPECIALLY not those steel ones that actually wear out parts must faster than normal and do NOTHING for feeding.

Orginal GOOD barrels made for 7.62mm Navy Garands were made by SA, AMF and H&R.

For more info, you can google 7.62mm Navy Garands.

BDH

And the Navy bbls are marked like this...



Bruce

John Crusher

I've got an Italian Garand that has a SAIU '65 barrel on it and has match sights with the correct pinion and it shoots like a house a fire ! It's Winchester receiver,bolt,trigger group with a SA oprod. The barrel is 1-10 twist and even has a t-37 flash hider on it. I love the thing and shoot it as much as my M1As (bout every weekend).

Gus Fisher

GREAT picture. This demonstrates how CLEARLY the Navy had these barrels marked and you could see the markings when the op rod was locked to the rear in most cases.

Gus Fisher

OOPS, forgot something. The Navy had these built both in standard G.I. configuration and as NM rifles. There were at least two "grades" of NM rifles depending on whether they had a Hooded NM aperture or not and a couple other things.

Pomeroy

Gus, Thanks for the picture. Is it of a barrel with an insert or of a barrel chambered for 7.62 NATO? How can you tell one from the other? I am away from home at the moment but will look at my barrel when I return. I know the markings on the barrel are similar to those in the picture.

It sounds as if I should remove the metal spacer from the magazine if I don't want things to wear too quickly. Would that be wise?

SOCOM42

I had posted this before:

The real navy sleeve was intended to be permnantly installed. The neck of the 06 chamber was tapped with a special tap, sleeve inserted with a special tool and tapped into place with a hammer, bbl was put in proof firing jack and shot with a hpt round. Tube was then installed into rifle, headspace reamed, reasembled and function fired with 8 rounds. The fire forming extruded the sleeve material into the thread grooves causing a permnant installation.
The problem was not of function but of accuracy, there was way to much freebore. We did about 20,000 sleeve conversions for the navy in the first lot. In second lot most had new sa 65/66 7.62 bbls. A white plastic bullet guide spacer was also installed in each rifle.
\
Firing a 7.62 round in the 06 chamber is extreemly dangerous! case separation and failure to obturate can cause physical harm. the removable inserts can come out unknowingly in the course of firing. we ran into this problem and resolved it by grooving then later tapping the neck before installation. No adhesive of any sort was used in the process of installation.

11/3/2011
Let me add, gas ports were enlarged due to gas loss from excessive freebore.
sleeved tubes were given an initial o/s hole during the sleeving process, later during function testing (firing) these were drilled on an individual basis to make the rifle function
i do not remember if we installed h&r tubes on them or they were just contracted to the navy. My job did not have me paying attention to what tube was installed but on the flow of production and tooling to do the job.

bd111

Reportedly the "Air Force" match Garands CMP has been selling for $2K ea include some with the 7.62 chamber insert along with some in original .30-06 and some more that were re-barreled 7.62 with '60's SA barrels chambered for the shorter cartridge. If you're interested in the subject of the 7.62 insert rifles you can get some links by googling Steve Rutledge Garand. He's been one of the history compilers for the Garand Collectors Association.

Gus Fisher

The picture is a barrel originally chambered for 7.62mm Nato. If you have a 64 or 65 dated barrel, you do not have the chamber insert. IF you have a WWII or 1950's dated barrel, there is a chamber insert in the barrrel.

YES, ABSOLUTELY get that metal spacer out of your rifle. I have inspected rifles with them in the rifle and again a year or two later when they started malfunctioning for no good cause. The Follower Rod especially wears on the metal block and that also causes undue wear on the other parts. In the case of more than one rifle I inspected "before and after" many round fired, the metal block screwed up most all the parts involved in timing/functioning of the Garand.

If you want/need something in there to remind you it is a 7.62mm, Orion 7 sells a VERY good repro of the original fiberglass spacer.

Gus Fisher

Steve and Jim Adell are recognized as the two most knowledgeable folks on 7.62mm Garands.

Gus Fisher

Did you do the work in Southern California or perhaps Springfield Armory (The REAL one)? I notice by your location you are in Springfield's stomping grounds.

A lot of new in the tube Navy Garand barrels used to show up around here in the 90's and very early 2000's. Primarily these came out of the Norfolk area.

i got so used to mounting them that I was dumbfounded when one would not function correctly during function fire. I had my gages with me and swapped many parts to see if I could get it to function and it would not. Classis case of short recoil. So I took it home and did more than a field strip and could not initially figure out what was wrong. Then it hit me, "Stupid, it HAS to be something about the gas system!!" Well, it wasn't the gas cylinder, piston or anything else. I stared at the gas port for five minutes before it dawned on me to check the size. Sure enough, it was .078" like a .30-06 barrel. So I drilled it out, reassembled the rifle, went back to the range and it worked perfectly. I had never run into that before.

I brought that up on another forum and Bill Ricca told me I had had a rather rare barrel in the first six months of production. SOCCOM42's explanation of having to drill/ream the gas ports answers why they were made that way. Later production barrels came with a standardized .106" gas port.

Most of my experience with Navy Garands was with the 3,000 we had in storage as Trophy Rifles we had initially gotten from NAS Crane. I can't say I thoroughly inspected all of them, but I inspected a huge majority of them. SA and AMF barrels were the most common on these, but we did see H&R barrels enough that we did not think they were rare. Of course in our area, we also see a lot of the Navy Trophy rifles from the Navy's competition in arms programs.

pendennis

I own a Navy rebarrel. It was done in February 1966. I found it a couple of years ago at a gun shop in central Michigan. This particular one had been restocked with a Boyd's laminate stock.

It shoots every bit as accurately as my others in .30-06. I don't think it was ever a match rifle, but it's a dream to shoot.

As an aside, I bought a Garand at a local show that is chambered in 7.62mm NATO. This one is a repatriated M1, coming in from South Korea. The barrel is marked "Arlington". A search showed Arlington Ordinance was the importer. Whenever it was done, someone over tightened the barrel by a few degrees. I took it to a good M1 mechanic who re-installed the barrel. Before re-installation it grouped fine, but not to point-of-aim. It shoots great now.

SOCOM42

worked at harrington and richardson, park ave, worcester, ma. From 1957-1975 5 times part and full time as an aprentice toolmaker and finally as a toolmaker-process engineer. M14 production, navy garand rebuilds, spiw, navy m1 7.62 mag conversion, m16a1, 45 acp field and match bbls, minigun bbls, m14 field bbls, to name a few projects.

gulliver62

Gus, weren't all of the 7.62mm barrels actually manufactured by SA and H&R and AMF were the sub-contractors who did the conversions? That has been my understanding but like everything Garand, it is subject to my memory and new information.

In the picture above the barrel is marked SA 11010457 SPL 12 65 which looks like a Dec 1965 SA barrel.

I have 2 of these rifles. One I am sure is a real H&R conversion. The other has the same markings but the striking (H&R ...) is not as deep. It is an SA barrel with what appears to be the correct numbering.

I would love to have one of the AMF converted Garands. They are rare as hens teeth.