I tried it out this weekend
One of the Chinese flat back mags produced constant failure to feeds, stove pipes, etc.... the other two Chinese mags worked great. The 5 round Chinese mag worked fine too.
I had 4 blued east german mags and 3 worked well with no issue. The other one had one instance where the bullet got lodged halfway into the chamber. But, it worked for the most part. The 2 problem mags are in great shape and the springs seem fine.
The Chinese mags all seated fine loaded up with 30 rounds but the east german mags refused to seat with 30 rounds, 29 was no problem. Go figure
All mags were basically brand new. I didn't try the 3 Bulgarian "bullet" plastic mags. They have been never loaded.
Before i shot it, i completely disassembled it and cleaned it. Firing pin wasn't as free as it should have been and the gas piston was frozen in the tube. I also cleaned the mags.
The gun looked hardly fired and had a few minor dings on the stock from getting banged around in the safe. The internal parts looked like new and the action was rough, like a new ak rifle before being broken in. I fired 300 rounds and the action was much smoother, so id guess it was only fired 100-200 rounds before i bought it.
After the failure to feeds, i looked closer at the gas piston and it seems kind of a tight fit, but not stuck in position. Im going to do a more thorough job of cleaning it. I sprayed some kroil oil in the tube and i could see i had a gas leak where the gas tube inserts into the gas block. It appears normal though and not the cause of any malfunctions
Can anyone tell me how free the piston should be in the tube? An ak piston seems much more free in there.
Anyway, i shot it from 20 yards out to 200 yards and it was plenty accurate. It was zeroed by the previous owner and the 300 yard "battle " setting seemed to work best.
Pretty sweet little rifle.
Im 95% sure the two mags are the cause of my malfunctions, but I'm not really in the mood to chase down any other gremlins that could potentially have caused the problems
Since its a factory ak mag sks, with a shortened gas system, trouble shooting info isn't easy to come by.