I’m writing to let this group know about my 104 issue. Back in late August I was at the range running some drills with my 104. BTW, to date it has been one of my favorites and I probably have at least 1500 rounds through it with absolutely no issue. Well, back to the problem, I was finishing my last mag when all of a sudden I heard a click instead of a boom. I cycled the action, a complete round popped out. I looked to see if a round went back in and it did. Click, nothing. Cycled it, click and same result. I inspected the rounds and it looked like I may have had some light strikes so back home to inspect. I thought I had a broken firing pin so I took it to my gunsmith who is also an authorized PSA dealer. He looked at it and found want turned out to be little pieces of primer metal packed into the firing pin tunnel and kind of occluding the firing pin. He removed those bits of metal and we test fired the gun and it ran like normal. His summation was that this would eventually occur again and suggested we send it to PSA to get their take on it. They have had my rifle now for about 6 weeks and are saying they are very backed-up in their repair shop. I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue. Needless to say my confidence in the gun has now taken a hit. Maybe someone from PSA wil see this and comment.
I havent ever had that with mine. What ammo were you shooting? If primers are popping then ammo would be the first thing I would inspect.
Wolf FMJ. Shot tons of it over time.
Recent wolf ammo has been known to have hatd primers which can result in piercing or popping. Personally I would change ammo when you get the gun back and see what happens. In their testing, I also wonder if PSA will be able to recreate the issue. Did you send in any ammo also?
Sounds like it could be an out of spec firing pin channel, or the channel has widened due to metallurgical issues. Fragments of primers shouldn’t be going in there.
That’s exactly what my gunsmith thinks and he said if that’s the case then it will happen again. Hence getting PSA involved. I’m very disappointed. To help console myself I went out and got a Zastava M92 and am working on making it like I want it. Heavier than my 104 though. Have not compared the weights but it seems to outweigh it by a considerable margin.
First of all I must say that i really like how you did up your 104. it looks real good. very nicely done sir. Secondly i currently have 3 PSA Ak products.. an AKV , an AKP GF3, and an AK GF5 classic with a plum polymer furniture set. I also have 2 others, that are not PSA. A Romanian Guard Kit gun i built myself, and a Yugoslavian Underfolder M70a Milled receiver kit gun rebuilt on a perfect Yugoslavian demilled receiver. That said, since we’re speaking about the PSA’s here, I mention them to show and say, its highly unlikely that the firing pin bore would have been corroding or working its way out of spec, if anything it would have had to have been made out of spec to begin with. Why would it have had to? because these bolts that these firing pins sit in, are made by Hammer forging. so all these PSA AK’s the GF3, GF5 and 103 all have hammer forged bolts seeing how hard that metal is i doubt that it would make the hole any bigger to get pieces of primer in there..
but the firing pin thats another issue all together. the firing pin is not made of such strong metal and is not made by such a tough forging process so that could be the source of the issues. IF there is a problem with the PSA parts side of things..
That all said and done with, i am tending to lean more towards the Wolf Ammo myself. Was this the wolf brass? or wolf steel? the few times ive shot wolf in the past its been pretty dirty to shoot so i can believe things popping out a primer and then debris coming back through the primer hole, into the firing pin /bolt face area to cause issues….
I would have no worries about the dependability of the psa once it gets back from customer service. now im not sure how long that will be, as i don’t have anyone to talk to and cant really look it up or anything.. but maybe @sean.psa can …. you’ll have to see if he gets on here and asks you for your return information or whatever they issue you when you turn in something for repair.
personally though, going back to what many were saying… i’m leaning on the wolf being the issue to be honest. also out of curiosity, how often had you cleaned that bolt and firing pin / carrier in that ak? not that they ever need it supposedly, but just curious, maybe there was something left in there like a burr or something that worked free ? just trying to think outside the box..
Thanks Gamecock. I value your opinion and you may be 100% correct on the Wolf ammo. It was steel cased. One of the reasons that I was drawn to AKs was the belief that it was one tough gun that didn’t care whether you cleaned it or what you fed it. Of course proper maintenance is always prudent and I think I keep my guns in good condition. Wolf ammo seems to be a staple for AKs and I have run plenty though my 104 as well as a few other brands. It could be my gun is just over gassed and was shedding primers but my dumbass did not look at any of the cases prior to this problem. I guess that’s my issue, why after so many rounds of pure enjoyment why did it just stop. If it was the ammo or if I was always shedding primers I figure it would have happened much earlier. Here’s hoping that it comes back with some sort of answer.
I have never seen wolf ammo do what they are saying, and steel case is a staple of the AK market.
You have an out of spec bolt and firing pin.
Could very easily be a bad batch of ammo. I had a bad batch of 45 from Winchester one time. I sent them the box and remaining ammo and they replaced the whole box.
You’ve mentioned over-gassed a couple times and I’m struggling to connect the dots to your issue. They ride the spring on return and no gas is present when the firing pin hits the primer. All of them are over-gassed in a brass world per se due to being ready for lacquered steel casings (which Wolf is) and there’s a certain amount of paint burn off with every shot. I’d wait to see what PSA says.
My reasoning is that the overpassed system may cause the pin to rip up primers.
No sir. Never even thought it could be ammo related due to all the types I fed it.
But you said Wolf when I asked. What other ammo have you used?
Tela, Red Army, Golden Tiger, that stuff from Cabelas (can’t remember name), Belom, AAC
Thats certainly a different list than what you said before. Which specific ammo caused the issues? Or can you at least narrow it down based on headstamp?
I was shooting Wolf when it happened.
Did it happen with any other ammo and do you have any of that specific wolf batch left?
Hey Guitar, that’s the whole point. I’ve probably put at least 1500 rounds of various ammo through this gun before this issue came up. The gun ran flawlessly until it didn’t. The reason I put this out there in the first place is because I have never heard of this occurring on any rifle. I posted it here and on AK.net and I have not had a single person say this has happened to them. Plenty of theories but no actual experience. Yes, could be the ammo and it could be the bolt. My gunsmith thinks it’s the bolt/ firing pin channel because he has not seen this happen either. I was just checking here since it is a PSA product.
Gotcha. If it is an issue with the bolt or firing pin, PSA will take care of it. That’s the good thing. My engineer brain wants to root out the cause though. While Wolf is a well known ammo brand, all ammo has an issue now and then. I’ve seen squibs before and a few years ago I had an 11% fail to fire ratio with a certain brand of ammo that I will never use again.