Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles M1 carbine question

I am having some issues with extraction in an M1 Inland carbine. Upon firing, the extractor appears to slip over the rim and leaves the empty case in the chamber. If the bolt is allowed to return to battery and then pulled back again, the cartridge remains in the chamber. It slides easily from the chamber with a screwdriver or knife blade. This began to occur the last time I had this gun and ammo out though the extraction problems weren't to this extent.Then and now I was using Armscor ammo. The same box in fact. The extractor moves and seems to be under decent tension with no obvious damage. I did a full take down and cleaning after the previous outing in case it was dirty which actually seemed to have exacerbated the issue as it now occurs every time.

I also had some different but unidentifiable brand of commercial ammo which I tried. The empty case would extract but often stovepiped or remained laying on top of the magazine preventing the bolt from closing. The empties that did eject landed only a couple feet away at most.This piqued my curiosity regarding velocity. I had my chronograph in the car from an earlier outing so clocked a couple rounds of each. The Armscor were in the 1750 fps range with the other being slightly over 1800 fps. This is well under the ~1950 fps of military specs and probably explains the short throw of the empties that did clear the receiver.

My question is: Does anyone think this problem is related to the ammo rather than the extractor? In this small sample the higher velocity rounds extracted properly much of the time. It seems odd that the extractor would not slip over the rim to grip and extract the empties at the lower velocity but would do so at the higher but I don't know. The rim diameter and thickness seems to be up to spec so that shouldn't be an issue. It ran great with milsurp and some aluminum case last summer though I didn't chrono it for comparison.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome. Thanks

It could be as simple as a dirty chamber that's sticking the case wall after firing, but not when it's cooled a bit, and you're getting the knife blade out.

The carbine headspaces off of the case length - I'd measure the Armscor case length and see what that tells you.

If the case length is in spec, the extractor is probably failing to grab the case rim either to wear, or and issue with the case.

Grab your closest reloading manual and calipers - spec the case heads and rims to see if they are in spec or not.

If the mystery ammo is extracting - the Armscor should as well unless it's a bit out of spec, and fighting a dirty chamber.

Try some milsurp ammo. If you can find some.

Thanks for the suggestions. I did measure the cases and the rims seem to be in spec. I didn't measure the extractor groove depth as the calipers I grabbed was too wide to fully fit.

I don't think it is a rough chamber as I would think the other, higher velocity ammo would have also stuck as well as the milsurp and aluminum cased ammo I used the previous time. Especially as I cleaned out the chamber well with a wire brush as some steel wool as part of my previous cleaning. I'm thinking the weaker ammo is not producing rapid enough bolt speed to "pop" the empty from the chamber causing the extractor to ride up and over the case rim. That the faster ammo from this trip and the milsurp and other ammo from the last session seems to suggest this. Next trip will see more variety of ammo, including reloads, and will run them over the chronograph for comparison.

I have to order parts for other guns from Numrich so will add an extractor and maybe spring to the order. I don't think that is the problem but I have to place an order and I don't seem to have an extra on hand anyway. It should make the shipping cost a little more reasonable.

Did you clean the ejector, the ejector spring and its hole? It sounds like you’ve already addressed the extractor.

I would look at replacing the ejector spring , IF the ejector is in spec and not worn., or replacing Both. You should be able to insert a spent case in the bolt head and not pull it out straight .
I also check for Bolt wear (Rattle) and crud in the gas piston system while I'm at it. That often gets neglected.
Rich

On reloading a carbine the brass is bad about growing in length. If it gets past trim length, it will go over pressure as the gun headspace's on the case mouth. I have a couple and they like clean, trimmed brass, watch cast bullets, with lead shavings at the case mouth.

The first thing I would do is to try some different ammo. Military surplus if you can find it, or some Remington or Winchester commercial stuff. If that also fails to eject, then proceed further.