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Patrol Rifle Pit Stop

1K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  Ted Brown 
#1 ·
This H&R Arms Co. USGI M14 was rebuilt by ANAD in October, 1980. It's been on patrol for a while and came back to my arms room after the operator started stringing shots during quals. One of the first things that I noticed was the loose op rod.

Have a look at the photos and make note of the location of the pencil point. There's just too much "play" there for my liking. Looks like a loose op rod guide is allowing the op rod to contact the stock. That will surly cause issues with shot consistency.

More to come later, but I thought you all would like some USGI M14 eye candy in the meantime.

Enjoy!
--- SGRIN
 
#5 ·
A brief update......

So I was able to get some time to work on this rifle a bit, as the officer has been issued a different rifle in the meantime, which he likes better anyway...go figure.

At any rate, after removing the op rod guide pin, and replacing it with a NOS USGI pin, the op rod guide is now ROCK SOLID......doesn't move at all. I took my time and aligned the guide nearly perfect so the op rod contacts the tail of the piston as close to dead center as I could get it to. I also replaced the USGI piston with a different USGI piston in better condition.

The "slop" has improved, but not to the degree I would have liked.

So I took a look at the op rod tab......it appears very worn, and seems to be allowing the op rod to "wiggle" quite a lot in the op rod channel. I will need to dig out my digital calipers and take some measurements.

One step at a time........... SGRIN
 
#6 ·
The op rods in government M14 rifles are subject to rapid excessive wear compared to commercial rifles. The tabs get beat to death as they travel across the dismount notch. There are standards for this wear as well as the overall tab thickness and other dimensions. The most critical factor is how thick the tab is. Anything below .095 should be suspect. The height of the lug is specified to be .310 to .320. Allowable wear from the dismount notch cannot be less than 3/64" at the outer edges of the tab. Anything less, it's time to rebuild the tab or replace the op rod.
 
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