Will do once I’m back home and able to. Now that you mention it though, I tried to take out the firing pin when I first got the rifle as it had a gritty firing pin (which seemed to free up as I fired the first few mags through it, so I dismissed it as an issue). The firing pin retaining pin was stuck pretty good in the bolt, I couldn’t remove it with a standard AK cleaning kit punch and a hammer, so I’ll have to work on getting it out when I’m back home with all of my tools.

Found a few posts claiming that replacing it with a 5.56 Beryl or AK74 firing pin fixed other user’s issues, so I’m ordering a 74 firing pin off of CSS to give it one last Hail Mary…

Yeah but replacing it with another pin is not diagnosing the problem, and this one actually seems pretty easy. Measure the pin, measure the protrusion of the pin from the bolt face at full stroke. Might be as simple as modding the current pin.

As for hammer springs, I don't know what comes stock in PSA rifles. I use double-wound old-school style hammer springs from Cannon Spring in OK, original design with a little more power in modern ASTM silicon music wire springs. Never had an issue.

Appearently the issue some others were having with the PSA 5.45 and 5.56 AKs is the OAL of the firing pin was somewhere around .03”-.04” short compared to a combloc firing pin. The Beryl 5.56 firing pins also has about .02” more length on the ‘nose’ of the firing pin compared to the PSA and Milspec FP. If the FP’s OAL is too short, you simply won’t have any material to ‘mod’, unless you want to cut material off the back of the bolt; which would likely introduce other wear issues since you may cut through the hardness of the bolt, exposing softer metal.

Looking at mine, the FP in my bolt doesn’t achieve full protrusion when the tail of the bolt is pressed against a flat surface, it only achieves full protrusion when depressing the back of the FP with my finger (which then causes the tail of the FP to be shallow of the tail of the bolt stem); thus making me think that the FP’s OAL is too short.

Oh, almost forgot the S/N Prefix of my rifle is AK6

FP Protrusion when tail of bolt is pressed against a flat surface:



FP Protrusion when I depress the tail of the FP with my finger, forcing it to full travel:



Tail of the bolt after depressing the FP to full travel, where the FP is sitting below the back of the bolt (note the dimple on the bolt stem where it looks like they hardness tested it):

There it is, you nailed it. And I agree, no modding that to work short of tig'ing some material on the end of that pin which I would not do or count on.

Well, turns out the firing pin is in-spec at 3.381" (Should be 3.380")

However, the overall length of the bolt itself is about .012" too long, which coincides with a measured .012" gap between the back of the firing pin and the back of the bolt when the firing pin is fully depressed. The PSA 101 bolt is measuring 3.450" and the listed OAL of a Russian AK-74 bolt is 3.438". For shits and giggles I took my KUSA KR-103 out (since it uses AK-100 series geometry for the bolt) and it measured 3.439".

That's why God invented the Dremel.

So it sounds like back to the PSA mothership for a new bolt.

My son just got his 102 from PSA and took it out this past weekend. He shot 300rnds with zero issue. He lives in Colorado, and I'm in Texas. I will have to measure his stuff here in a few months when I get up there. I'm sure we will have plenty of other examples before I can give any #'s though.

Well that's a different kettle of fish, nice job in thinking to measure that as well. That seems fixable. Pretty easy in fact.

ETA: While we're taking a close look at the mechanics here, how square is your hammer to the bolt when the whole thing is assembled and not cocked with hammer resting on rear of bolt? A severe angle can also contribute to light strikes as well as some deformation of the rear of the bolt over time.

Well, I did file off .013" off the back of the bolt and then applied some Brownell's Oxpho-Blue. I honestly thought the material of the bolt would be harder, though. The first swipe of my file immediately took off some material instead of just taking off some finish. I then hand-cycled and dry fired it numerous times to see if there's any apparent abnormal wear, and there doesn't appear to be any. Just have to take it out and test fire it again...

I messaged Josiah and told him my findings and what I'd done, and it sounds like they'd still warranty it if needed despite my shennanigans.



Mine didn't start having its issues until around 600ish rounds in. Up until then it was eating anything I'd throw at it out of any 5.56 AK mag I could give it.

I'll have him go out and throw more lead through it then.

It sounds like what you’re saying is this guy is wrong and his theory is stupid and your combat experience trumps everything a civilian could ever say or do. And that civilians lives don’t depend on guns at all and civilians probably don’t need to own anything good or perhaps weapons at all. Like civilian ownership is totally unnecessary. Is that correct?

C'mon dude, that's not what he said at all. Look I have respect for your opinion and even agree with several points you've made in another thread, but now it just looks like you're looking for a scrap.

Tech forum man. Not GD.

This is why i'm already missing dryflash3.

What?! What happened to dry?

Check your PM's.

my son did say he's seeing a lot brass shavings in his 102, and that the bolt is pushing into the cartridge on thee 1st round in the mags, even going so far as to dent them. He's using the mag warehouse magazines that a bunch of us jumped on.

I'm thinking, go shoot and wear them edges in.

Anyone else seen this?

ETA: He is heading out this weekend to do more shooting, I'll have him take pics if there are any issues.

There’s an old thread here where I chronicles my first putting with my 101. It was denying brass too. I chocked it up to the brass hitting the charging handle. It doesn’t really matter to me as I don’t reload.

Mine also deposits some brass shavings as well. Nothing I’d deem serious, but it does do it. I just keep on shooting it.

Well, back from the range turning 150 rounds of M193 Ball into noise for testing purposes. However, the rifle successfully fired all 150 rounds without a hiccup.

On Wednesday afternoon I received the CSS AK 74 Firing Pin. Last night I got around to comparing it to the factory PSA firing pin and found some interesting things; particularly the profile of the tips of the firing pins:

The CSS AK 74 firing pin is on the left, and the PSA firing pin is on the right



-The length of the CSS pin was about .006" shorter in OAL compared to the PSA
-However, the firing pin retaining pin cut appears to be a little more aft of the pin than the PSA pin.
-Last but not least; the tip of the CSS pin has a full diameter rather than the 'bullnose' profile of the PSA pin. It seems this is helping the CSS pin dimple the primers a bit deeper than the PSA pin.

Dimples on the primers:

Dimples from CSS pin on the left, and dimples from PSA pin on the right:



I noticed some slight peening on the edges of the bolt where I had filed on it but not in the center of the bolt stem. I'll continue firing and monitoring the bolt stem but for now the rifle seems to be working much better.



Mine also some brass shavings in the receiver, but then again so does my HD-18 SVD (I only shoot brass x54r in that rifle). The dents in the brass seem to be exclusive to 5.56 AKs, as my current 106CR and old 106FR both put the same exact dent in spent cases. Even if you reload, the dent will just fire-form out.

My 102 is still with PSA.

My son went and put another 400 plus rounds through his 102 today and reported zero issues.

Good info on the firing pins.

Back in the day on my Saiga when I was running Galil mags I would sometimes have a FTF where the bolt would start to strip the top round, but would "lose" the face of the rim, and it would slip under the bolt after the round had been already slightly pushed forward in the mag. Then because the round couldn't move down into the stack again, the bolt would then rake the case and leave a hard gouge down the entire length of the case, sometimes even ending up with the bullet becoming unseated.

I ended up taking a file and lightly smoothing the sharp edges on the forward face of the bottom of the bolt, which seemed to solve this issue - BUT the real reason was that the mag was sitting too low to begin with, and if it was seated at the right height, the bolt never would have "lost" the round during feeding. ETA: I see in the images above that the PSA bolt does not have the hard lower edge that either my Saiga or Bulgarian 5.45 bolts have. Honestly it almost looks like they made too much of a chamfer/rounding of these edges.

I would look closely at how much engagement of the rim face there is with the bottom of the bolt as it begins to strip the round from the mag. Ideally one corner of the bottom of the bolt will almost reach the primer.

If there is barely any contact, either the mag rear lug dimensions aren't quite right for the PSA rifles, or the selector stop plate may be too thick.

Regardless 5.56 AKs will dent the shit out of ejected rounds. Because the case has a very minimal taper vs. either x39 family, it will generally hit the dust cover as it ejects, and will probably get hit by the charging handle as well.  If you want the cases to survive (reloading etc) you need to tune the ejection strength either via an XP recoil spring or an adjustable piston.

I'll upload a pic shortly to help explain. It's not ejection that's causing the issues, it's the bolt that is hitting it and denting the case as it rides forward.