Yep. I hope they come back with an explanation that gives me confidence in my rifle again. It was my favorite. .
The pin is where it is when the gas hits the piston so it won’t rip it up. If anything over-gassed will get the pin moving backwards faster than under-gassed. I hope that makes sense.
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@jerry.putnam thank you jerry. I appreciate the compliment. Wolf I’ve shot both the brass and the steel, and they’re both dirty, but the steel cased I’ve noticed is considerably more so than what I’ve experienced with the brass cased. now that’s just what I’ve experienced so ymmv, but I’d bet its pretty much that way across the board with their manufacturing setup. did that stop me from buying and shooting it? heck no! inexpensive is good, i need inexpensive, and so if it was the cheapest that’s what was bought that day. I’ve been lucky i guess that nothing has been broken or failed on me yet from any of the manufacturers I’ve shot and owned so far.
Generally you’re correct. AK’s are Tough, and don’t care what ammo you shoot through them, and don’t care how often you do shoot them, and don’t care if they’re clean, dirty, run over, buried in mud, dirt, stomped on dropped from a plane, truck, car, wall, building whatever. but thats talking about parts breaking… and well a light primer strike may not be a part broken, but rather a part that has been impeded from working as it should have. So I’m still on the boat about how tough an AK is and I really don’t worry about that much at all. The firing pin is probably the weakest point on most guns, so it makes sense to have a spare ne or two depending on how many you have in your collection and depending on the variants that you need according to which AK’s you own. anyways I’m getting off topic a bit… .. Wolf is pretty much a staple now that the surplus has dried up yes… its cheap and iirc it was / is made over seas still somewhere on the same plants that some of that surplus was/is/ or something like that idk.. .its been a long long long time since i researched any of that but basically all that to say IF it was the ammo batch you had that was exceptionally dirty, well that’s ok. now you know. lets get this resolved figure out what caused it, or what could have caused it, and repair what needs repaired and see if you can reproduce the issue with the existing remaining ammo you have. if you cant, then its good to go then… *IF you can reproduce it, then I’d swap ammo and clean the hell out of the gun, and see if it works again, and if it does, run some good brass ammo through it.. see what it does then.. if that fixes it, then you’re good to go and know what it is. that’s basically what i think is the best ways to figure it out and go forward from there. …
Over gassed, yeah could be… but I’d doubt it… as you’ve been down something like `1500 rounds already right without much issues? Who looks at ejected cases when you’re firing if there are no issues? 90-% don’t I’d wager.. the instant stop, all of a sudden, is the reason why i said i thought it was ammo related again.. its another reason i should say.. also with ammo, you may not be shedding primers the whole time within a certain batch of ammo.. it may be fine all through but 2 - 3 or 4 rounds just randomly have bad seating of the primers and randomly are loaded in the boxes… you never know though.. it could be something else about the ammo too.. no telling..
I was gonna say maybe it needs more break in time.. but 1500 rounds is quite a good round count and would in my book constitute break in 3 times over by now. so idk.. we’ll see what PSA comes back with and hopefully you’ll be GTG in the end.. the only way to know for sure is to get out there and to shoot the crap out of it 
Oh btw i love that pic thats hillarious!!
while what you say about the bolt and pin is a possibility and one that i pointed out earlier in the post, I believe i clearly explained why i felt it explicitly wasn’t the bolt at all. the firing pin could be broken yes, or warped/bent.. but I’m leaning more towards faulty/overly dirty steel batch ammo from wolf. being a staple yes, it is i even shoot it myself, but that doesn’t keep it from being naturally dirty to begin with… this stuff could have gotten even more dirty since my last batch I’ve bought so who knows. We’ll see.
Well put rufus. exactly what I was thinking/trying to say.
The only thing i’ve ever seen over gassed do to a primer is punch holes into them honestly, and by doing that it would also sometimes pull the primers out of the casings.
Ok … that’s a bit more than just wolf, but a lot of it has a lot in common with wolf. i think even may be made by the same folks… Red army, Golden tiger, Tela, i wanna say is all previous communist states that had produced it. and some may be still from China which means still communist lol. like i said going by memory and its a poor memory these days with the chemo having given me brain fog a lot. I’m gonna have to research ammo now. lol. i once knew all that stuff. I wanna say they’re made by Barnaul…. but idk….
Remember I’m not a PSA employee, and I’m definately not an engineer. so what I’m saying about what caused it is based off of my experiences and personal knowledge.. that’s about it. that is why I’m saying its the ammo. many many years in the past of wolf ammo having been bad primers, and extremely dirty, etc…
well remember Rufus, its an AK, so the gas never hits the chamber its a piston driven setup,.. so all the gas is doing is pushing that bolt carrier back faster or with more force than it could with less gas. i am a little confused by what you weree trying to explain though bud..so maybe its me who doesnt understand there. ?
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Thanks. We will see what they come back with. Fingers crossed.
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youre welcome. im interested in what they say as well please keep us updated.
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UPDATED !
Okay, PSA has had my rifle for over 8 weeks. Yesterday my gunsmith called me a said “Your 104 is back from PSA and you need to come in to talk to me about it”. So I got there today and he handed me a box with my 104 init. He said it arrived with no paperwork and used his address from the old shipping label. No explanation, no email, no nothing but the rifle. From what I (and my gunsmith) could tell they apparently replaced the following: new bolt, new barrel ( with new front sight post), new trunnion and new receiver! On top of that they stamped this new receiver and trunnion with my old serial number!
There is no stamp on the barrel, appears to be nitride and not cl. No stamp on the trunnion designating GF3, 4 or 5. No nothing. The bolt is new and is stamped with my old serial number and get this, I still have my old bolt carrier. I can tell easily because my gun was cerakoted so the new parts stand out.
We think they went to replace the bolt and could not get it to headspace correctly so they went and replaced the barrel, trunnion and receiver assembly. I guess this was the most economical and easiest way to get it “fixed”. Not sure what to think about it. On the downside, the cerakote is now trashed. On the bright side I have a new barrel and trunnion on a gun I know I put over 2k+ rounds through and I bought this gun used for $750.
So apologies for not having a root cause. My smith is going to try and talk to his contacts at PSAbuf he told me not to hold my breath. So….closure???
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that’s awesome tbh.. sucks about your cerakote.. i always wanted to get a fancy cerakote on like one of my favorite carbines
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There will be a communication about what they did. Either look under the foam or check your spam folder. They dont just return guns with 0 comms.
Unfortunately, it did in this case. There was another guy in the shop said the same thing happened to him with something he sent in. I can tell you that I received very minimal communication from Springfield on my M1a repair but they did tell me what they replaced.
PSA Always sends comments. That is one thing they never skimp on. Send me a PM with your contact info and I will see what I can find.
include your return number or whatever when you send it to GG.. he’ll have to go off the reservation and see if we can dig down through people we know to figure out if we can track down any info. he is right the would normally next to never send a gun without any comm after repair.. be it email or paperwork in the box.. its very odd that they didnt this time. not saying its not impossible… just odd. we’ll try to help to figure it out, but at least you got a practically new gun.. sucks about the ceracoate.. is that /was that a custom pattern or will it be easy for you to reproduce on it wihtout much $ out of pocket?
Hey Gamecock. GG was able to get an explanation:
“Upon arrival of customer’s firearm, we inspected and found that bolt was out of spec, as well as barrel assembly. We replaced bolt, and barrel assembly, and rebuilt AK with new components. We then test fired 60rnds of AAC 7.62 Steel Case, and had no issues with feeding, firing, extracting, or ejecting rounds.”
I would have liked a more detailed description of the problem but this is adequate. It tells me that these parts were just worn to the point where the problems started. As I said before, I have put at least 2k through it and I bought it used so I don’t know the round count through it. It did run 100% until the problem began.
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only one way to find out!! range time
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this is great that he got an explanation, and further more, im glad you not only got an explanation, but now you know you have a practically brand new AK104 ak47 from pSa! that rocks! i only wish theyd of included that information in the box when they shipped it back. otherwise well done by psa!
let us know how she runs
Will do, Ga,ecock. This gun ran 100% until the issue. I would have preferred an explanation on what was actually wrong but I’m willing to see what the limits are now. That’s to GG for the assistance. Will get the cerakote fixed and get this thing back in the rotation.
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thats awesome. i’d check the firing action before the ceracoate is fixed just in case. not saying they are incorrect in fixing it, just saying that’d be my luck ya know
Yep. Sounds like good advice.