Failure to chamber 8th round in a Garand

[.45s r best]

I have a Springfield Armory M1 Garand. There are times when the rifle will not feed the 8th round. The bolt locks home without feeding the round as with a short stroke cycle. Does anybody have any idea why this would occur? It only happens on the eighth round.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[browningautorifle]

The book is available in the stickys on the top of the M1 section. You can download it. Perhaps the follower arm is bent or your op rod spring is weak. Don't worry, someone else will jump in soon and direct you.

[Bill Hollinger]

I had the same problem and it was the follow arm and I had to bend it to fix it.

[.45s r best]

Thanks for the help. I thought about the operating rod spring being weak, my thought on that was if the spring was weak, wouldn't it allow the bolt to slam back even farther and harder? I would think if the spring were to powerfull, then a short cycle would occur. Is this line of thought correct? I have a spare follower arm and I will try that. To go back to a weak spring, I read that if the spring was weak and if you were firing ammo that was too hot, the bolt could cycle faster than the next round could be pushed up in place before the bolt could strip a round off the clip. Has anybody heard of that?