Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles Mauser Feed/extraction problem

I have a Brazilian contract VZ-24 that was originally chambered in 7x57 but was rebarrelled to 257 Roberts. It doesn't like to feed off the right side of the box magazine and extraction is iffy. I'm pretty sure that the problem is a worn extractor, but I'm not sure. Anyone have a way to test that. And if that is the problem is there any way to adjust it? Or is is strictly a replace the extractor problem?

To quick check the extractor fit on a Mauser, pull the bolt, put a dummy round on the bolt face, under the extractor, hold the bolt with dummy round straight up. Then put the bolt body at a 60 degree angle and turn the bolt while maintaining the 60 degree angle. The dummy round should be held onto the bolt face a full turn.

It won't stay with the bolt like my other Mausers. I replaced the extractor with a new one and it is almost the same thing. So, the new extractor fixed the feeding issue, but now the extraction is basically non existent. I'm starting to wonder if someone maybe opened the bolt face up a little to make it a swede.

Sounds like the bolt face may have been modified, perhaps "squared" when it was re-barreled, if a new extractor will not hold a cartridge to the bolt face, someone may have gone past just removing the bluing all round on the face. If it now feeds correctly, but will not extract or hold the cartridge base to the bolt face. The 6.5 Swede bolt face will hold, feed and extract a .473 (308) case, so something else was done.
You can try to modify the extra, extractor, to work properly. Just try to set the claw in towards the firing pin hole a bit further by adjusting the extractor hold off points just a couple of thousands at a time, any mods to the extractor only. Try feeding and extracting with dummy rounds only.

So, an interesting thing happened. I made up some dummy rounds to check feed and extraction. Well, my dummy rounds were a different make of brass. They fed and extracted just fine. In fact all of my stuff feeds and extracts fine. EXCEPT for my newest batch of brass from Hornady. Which is kinda weird. I'm going to have to mic those when I get a chance to see what the difference is. Thanks for the help and suggestions.

Some brands of brass have deeper extractor groove cuts, this can and will affect both feeding and extraction.

I sense the frustration, Hads. That's just like when I tried to resize some brass with the same 'ole set of RCBS dies I have used for years. I ended up snapping two decapping pins in half and for the life of me I couldn't understand why. Low and behold the brass I was using had berdan primers in them! I was pissed!! DO NOT buy from U.S Reloading supply out of the state of Florida!!