need help with my 1922 M2...

Hi Folks - I have a 1922 M2 that I am having some trouble with, was hoping that there might be an expert or two that could give me some advice. I am pretty new to these guns so forgive me....I am having numerous failure to fires. I have replaced the mainspring, replaced the firing pin, to no avail. I have also tried to find the 'sweet spot' by adjusting the position of the firing pin by making adjustments to the firing pin nut - I don't know if this is correct, but I have tried to find the balance between getting the firing pin as far forward as possible without interfering with chambering a round.The firing pin sits flush to the face of the bolt. The gun is a 1938 gun, never been rebuilt, has a type 3 bolt that is NOT electro penciled with the guns serial number. So, what should I do next? Here are a couple of other symptoms. If the round doesn't fire, the bolt won't extract the round from the barrel (if I rework the bolt, try again sometimes it fires, maybe need to do this a couple of times). If the round fires, the bolt extracts the round without any issues. Thanks for the help!

in hearing about possible reasons for the M1922 misfires.

I have a M1922MII that had the same problem. My firing pin tip had a chunk out of it and I was only getting half circle strikes on the cartridge and quite a few failures to fire. I replaced the firing pin and mainspring with new ones. After that I got nice circular strikes but still many misfires. I put the old mainspring back in and function has been 100% since then.

Any chance this could be a headspace issue on westgard's rifle??

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Originally Posted by westgard

Hi Folks - I have a 1922 M2 that I am having some trouble with, was hoping that there might be an expert or two that could give me some advice. I am pretty new to these guns so forgive me....I am having numerous failure to fires. I have replaced the mainspring, replaced the firing pin, to no avail. I have also tried to find the 'sweet spot' by adjusting the position of the firing pin by making adjustments to the firing pin nut - I don't know if this is correct, but I have tried to find the balance between getting the firing pin as far forward as possible without interfering with chambering a round.The firing pin sits flush to the face of the bolt. The gun is a 1938 gun, never been rebuilt, has a type 3 bolt that is NOT electro penciled with the guns serial number. So, what should I do next? Here are a couple of other symptoms. If the round doesn't fire, the bolt won't extract the round from the barrel (if I rework the bolt, try again sometimes it fires, maybe need to do this a couple of times). If the round fires, the bolt extracts the round without any issues. Thanks for the help!

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Westgard - I've had exactly the same issue as you describe with my Rifle. What I found is if I use 'Pre-1970" ammo it doesn't have any issues. Late Remington 'Sub-Sonic' - Winchester LR or HP gets 'Fail To Fire" - Both with ejection issues unless they fire.
My M-2 Bolt has the adjustable headspace and everything is "clean as a pin'. I see nothing fucntionally wrong with my bolt. spring or firing pin. I have another bolt which I set up for my rifle without any change in mis-fires ete.

Either of my two bolts fire 'pre-1970' Ammo without issue. What I have concluded is modern ammo has a harder rim or a less sensitive primer compound. I truely don't understand it either...:banghead:

If my conclusion should be correct I only see two poosible fix's. Either a stronger spring or a ever so slightly longer firing pin. Remember however (IIRC) the M2 has a dual striker as opposed to the M1 which has a single strike firing pin.

Perhaps Herscal will chime in.

I believe that neither the M1922M1 nor the M2 .22 has a dual striker. I do not own a M1922M1 but I own two M2's and neither of them has a dual striker. I believe that only the M1922 has the dual striker.

Only the 1922's had dual firing pins and not to many of them survived without being converted to the M2's configuration. The M1"s and M2's had single firing pins. You might want to try to change the firing pin and see if that helps.

Hi, I actually have tried a number of things, none of them have worked so far - replaced the main spring, replaced the firing pin, replaced the extractor. All give me the same result (that is the problem is still there....).

I could try the 'vintage ammo' approach, but I don't have a ready supply of it, so it would be pretty difficult trying to find someone that has a bunch of it kicking around - don't think my local gun shop will stock it ! :D

Westgard,

I too have experienced misfires and extraction failures with my MI1 rifle.

Before Winter set-in last year I took this rifle and .22 lr ammo from three manufacturers out to the range. Ammo from one manufacturer worked fine with only an occasional misfire and no extraction failures. Another would not fire but would extract. Yet a third would not fire or extract.

Web research revealed that the rim thickness of .22 lr ammo varies greatly within a manufacturer and much more between manufacturers. So as soon as I can get back to the range, I'm going to segregate rounds into each of the three groups. Then I'm going to measure rim thickness by dropping the rounds into .223 Remington brass, with a dial gauge zeroed on the brass so that the difference is the thickness of the rim. Depending on what I measure, I should see a "sweet spot" of rim thickness and/or manufacturer that this rifle likes.

My thought is I'm having a head space issue aggravated by 22 lr rim manufacturing tolerances and specs among and between manufacturers.

On the other hand, my Remington 550 happily gobbles-up anything it's fed!

FWIW,




Joe

Well, I got this rifle fixed, what was the problem? It was a bad chamber! Wow, never expected to hear that from my gunsmith. Anyway, it's fixed now, shoots and extracts like a champ every time.

Now I wonder if that' why the rifle is in pristine condition? Maybe no one could ever actually fire it??!

Bad chamber? Please elaborate. Do you mean the chamber mouth was damaged by firing pin strikes from excessive dry firing?

no actually, we said that the chamber was a bit too small. Everything looked fine, no rust, etc. First he just tried polishing the chamber a tiny bit, but this didn't help. He then took a match reamer and it took out a couple of thousandths toward the front end of the chamber. He was pretty surprised, as was I. Now it works like a champ, feeds fine, extracts fine, no issues with misfires (oh, he also made the firing pin have a bit of a V shape to it. I am summarizing quite a bit here, as this was a pretty long and involved process to get this all straightened out....

I have heard that .22 ammo is spec'd out differently and manufactured differently now, don't know if that is in fact the case, but it now works great with new manufactured ammo