M48A Accuracy Issues

[Patrick Chadwick]

Is there something I am missing about these guns or did I get a lemon?

Yes/maybe. Read on!

That's the cause of you troubles right there. PRVI/PPU 8mm is underpowered. Popular consensus seems to be it's loaded to SAAMI specs rather the European C.I.L specs. Muzzle velocities average around 300fps less than Milsurp or other European sporting ammo with comparable bullet weights. Give some S&B a try, it should solve your low POI problem.

Sorry, I don't think it will. IMHO, the whole thread about trying different types of commercial ammo is a confusing and expensive red herring.

Let's look at some simple ballistics, taken from the table in the Sierra manual for 175gn .323 dia. SPT bullets - and believe me, at 100 yards it hardly matters what type of bullet you use - and I use everything from round ball to 6mm BR boattails - it just isn't flying far enough for BC etc to make the kind of difference under discussion here.

Right at the top: 3200 fps. Drop at 100yds = 1.78"

Down at the bottom: 2100 fps. Drop at 100yds = 4.18"

So the diffence is a mind-boggling 2.4 inches! Which does not explain the following:

At 100 yds (the furthest I have been able to shoot it) it shoots below the black and some shots shoot land below the target circle but still on paper.

The number of Mausers I have shot must now be getting close to 3-figures. And up to now none of them shot too low. On the contrary, all were high to disastrously high. So with some of them I had to tack on a second bull below the target to get the shots to land in the black of the upper bull. The typical military Mauser was zeroed at 200-300 meters for a central hold, depending on the country. So one has to puzzle out why this one shoots so abnormally low, not waste money on all sorts of ammo.

Easy fix! Slide the rear sight up to get the vertical shot placement you want.

Once again, a photo would save reams of speculation. But a photo of the front sight might well reveal that the blade has been seriously filed down, as a fix for the usual high POI of ex-military Mausers. This is commonly done to get the POI into the black with a backsight leaf setting that can be varied to suit different types of ammo.

So Steve's answer is correct. The sight was probably so drastically shortened because a previous user was shooting lead bullets, at a much lower velocity than any jacketed bullet. There is nothing wrong in that, as you adjust the backsight leaf to suit, but if it bothers you, get a replacement foresight blade.

Post a photo of the foresight, so we can all see if I'm talking tripe!