L4 mag issues

[AmEngRifles]

To be honest, there were MAJOR mag issue problems with the early X10 and L4A1 guns and even MORE when they were formulating the L4A2 Bren with the enlarged front knib that had to seat a little lower into the body. Unbelievably, the .303" gun body drawings that they were working from were not quite correct. To finally work out what was REALLY going wrong, they had to cut a body longiudinally straight down the middle from end to end. Only then could they see and establish what the problem was and how to solve it in two quite simple ways

Now THAT I would like to see. Kinda like cutting a hog with a band saw from head to hole!

I am hoping that because mine is an L4A4, they had that all worked out. I knew there were early problems, but was not sure if that persisted through the life of the L4 series? And that makes it sound like there was a POSITION issue with the mag, not a design issue with the mag itself??

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[AmEngRifles]

Now THAT I would like to see. Kinda like cutting a hog with a band saw from head to hole!

I am hoping that because mine is an L4A4, they had that all worked out. I knew there were early problems, but was not sure if that persisted through the life of the L4 series? And that makes it sound like there was a POSITION issue with the mag, not a design issue with the mag itself??

Update: 4.15.19. Not sure why I didn’t think of this sooner.

Has been a while with me still working through these issues with my Historic Arms L4A4. I ended up in touch with Mighty Lime and purchased one of his striker set up. I was having continued issues with the HA gun, as well as firing issues with my Project Guns Mk III. Because ML leaves both rails on his striker ( reflects his approach to builds in semi auto Brens), it is a no go to work in the HA Bren due to the fact Len welds up the left side guideway and mills down the rail on both the piston extension and his striker. So a no go with the ML system in a Historic Arms Gun unless you have the rail guideway milled open again. Then that leads to questions of trying to alter the Bren body to accept full auto parts. Don’t need to go down that path. Mighty Lime has been looking at his system altered to work with Historic Arms Brens, but does not have any set up at this date.

The Project Guns Mk III I put the ML striker system in runs great now! There is only one issue I found associated with ML lighter striker. It runs and pops all commercial primers in modern manufactured .303 with no problems. However, it does not strike the very hard primers of some South African Mk VII I tried. In those instances, I can understand the virtues of the heavy striker HA Brens use. Of course, heavy striker needs heavy spring ( maybe?) which leads to reliability issues.

NOW, what I started out to report got pushed back in the story because I was prefacing with some of the things I have learned along the way. But I woke up this morning with the revelation that I could lessen the spring pressures on my HA L4A4 by removing one spring. I removed the inner recoil spring in the set of nested recoil springs and tried running 5 rounds into the gun, from a mag. This was to confirm there was still enough spring drive to strip a round from the mag and fully chamber. It worked! So off to the range I go!

While it was still unfortunately NOT the Fix All I hoped it would be, the gun ran about 95% better with reduced spring pressure to overcome. I had already backed the gas regulator down to a “ number 3” setting and that seemed fine. When I tried it at “2” I started getting misfeeds of Bolt Over Bass again. So regulator back to “3”.

I am still hoping to reduce the weight of the HA Striker, plus lighten the spring load of the striker spring, but have not located a spring maker yet. Made an inquiry with Len Savage to get a spare striker and striker spring, but got no reply? Wondering if he has gone out of business now?

So my L4 A4 still does not operate 100%, but it is getting closer. I do think some of the L4 mag springs may be a bit weak after all these years. Had a few issues with last round in the magazine doing the BOB thing. Think the round is bouncing in the mag once the rest of the stack is no longer there to keep heavier pressure downward...