What Should I do to make Soft Point Round Nose ammo feed into my M1 Carbine?

[rod5591]

My WW2 era M1 Carbine is pretty accurate except it shoots high and right. I want to get it so that is accepts soft point ammo and is correctly zeroed.

I bought A LOT of PP soft point round nose .30 carbine ammo only to find that it wont feed into . FMJ ammo feeds well however.

I thought the culprit was the feed ramp so I polished it up nice and buffed out some dings so that it shines nice and seems very smooth, however, when I try to chamber the PPU SP RN ammo, it still doesn't chamber and upon removal of the round there is a gouge in the bottom of the bullet's lead tip where it is getting hung up.

All my mags are GI issue and the feed problems seem to happen with them all.

Can anyone suggest a solution? How can I get my M1 Carbine to accept soft point ammo?

[joem]

Look at picture # 2 in the area just past the feed ramp. Enlarge picture and note the step up at the point before the bullet tip enters the chamber. The bullet may be catching on this small lip.

[kcw]

What is that dark, "pock" mark seen at approximately 4 o'clock at the mouth of the chamber? Is there a sharp edge along the chamfered edge of the chamber mouth in that area? If you invert your left index finger and run your finger nail from that dark mark toward the inside of the chamber mouth, does your nail hang up on a "sharp" edge along the outer edge of the chamfer? How does that area compare to the area near the seven o'clock position on the chamber mouth (I Assume that the feeding issue is on the right side only?)
As to the matter of the carbine shooting to the right, you can't adjust the rear sight to compensate? Do you possibly have an early, non-adjustable , flip, rear sight? As to shooting high, at what yardage are you shooting? How high of "zero" are you hitting? Understand that factory standards deemed it acceptable for a carbine to shoot (@ 100yds) where anywhere from point of aim to as high a foot above point of aim. If the carbine, with either the low leaf sight or the later adjustable sight set for 100 yards, could put five of seven fired rounds anywhere within that 12" area of elevation @ one hundred yards it was "good enough for government work". Each new sight was custom filed down to bring the point of impact into the acceptable range.

[Tuna]

During rebuild most carbines when the new adjustable rear sight was install did not have their front sight adjusted to the new rear sights.

In fact many carbine don't even have their original fronts sights as there were removed to change barrel bands and what ever sight was in the pile went on the next carbine. To adjust the rear sight it has to be moved to the left. If the sight is centered in the dove tail and you cannot adjust the windage any more left then you have to drift the rear sight to the left some. Not easy to do if it's well staked in place. To lower the point of impact you will have to get a new front sight and then slowly at the range as you shoot the carbine file the front sight down a small amount at a time till you have it hitting where you want it.

If there is any play in the magazine release it could be letting the magazines drop a slight amount which could cause the problem with the soft point ammo. Worn nubs on the magazines will also cause this problem as can a weak recoil spring since the soft point rounds cause more drag when feeding.

[rod5591]

So I made some adjustments that seem to have made a big difference. I examined all my mags and found that 2 of them had the springs in backwards, so I fixed those.

Then I carefully smoothed out the bottom part of the chamfer at the chamber mouth.

I took the carbine to the range and fired 50 rounds of the soft point ammo with only one failure to feed. That is much better than the 75% failure rate that I had before.

[PhillipM]

Could you post a pic of what you did?

[rod5591]

Here is a picture of the redone chamber.

I am not sure what the anomolie is in the photo of the chamber at 3 O clock but it is not there when I look at it, and the rifle appears to fire fine.

I also found that I continue to have problems with two of the magazines.

[PhillipM]

Thanks!

[phil441]

I examined all my mags and found that 2 of them had the springs in backwards, so I fixed those.

Out of five mags I bought from the CMP in 2007, two had the springs backward. I've always wondered about that................