[SoL]

Wow! Norinco make an M14 duplicate called an M305,
I just piced one up for NZ$600 and it seems solid.
I took it over to my friend's house and had his dad have a look at it,
he was a marksman in vietnam who used a scoped variant, and he said
it appeared to be the real deal with no obvious manufacturers defects or shortfalls. He also mentioned that there were a number of little tweaks you could do to the factory stock rifle to increase accuracy and reliability, can anyone shed any light on this?

SoL

[robocop10mm]

The Norinco M-14's are no longer imported into the US, but the Canadians can get them. When they were available in the US, many had improperly heat treated receivers. The later versions were corrected in this respected.

From what I have been able to ascertain, the latest version is quite serviceable. Glass bedding the stock will improve accuracy.

[Fisherking]

Take the hand gaurd off and trim it so there is no contack points between it and the lower stock. Another way of tightining up the gas systum is to undo the gas plug and then undo the part that conects the gass plug and gas chamber then revese it . This part will start to get tight at about the 4:00or 4:30 position then tighten it down to the 6:00 position. This tightens up the gas tube to the barrel no need for washers. Puting a NM spring guide and spring helps to.
By doing this iI trightend up my groups from 1.5 inches to 1inch at 100 yards.
A Muzzel break from Brownells is a nice drop in piece.
F.K.

[M14sRock]

You have a great rifle! Ron Smith at Smith Enterprise thinks quite highly of the ChiCom M14's.

Small correction, though. It was a small percentage of the bolts that were soft on some of the early US import ChiCom M14's. The receivers are excellent, hammer forged, and almost perfectly to USGI spec. I have an Armscorp that came with a Chinese bolt and it is still in spec (headspace) after thousands of rounds.

The oprod is a one piece forging. Only TRW made one piece oprods for the M14, originally. The rest of the parts in your rifle are forged, not cast, but the gas cylinder is not stainless steel (all USGI GC's were stainless) so keep it clean and dry.

Bed (or have bedded) your stock, get some Tubbs/Superior Shoting Systems chrome silicon springs and have someone who is familiar with M14's or M1 Garands do a trigger job and you should have a tack driver. The ChiCom bbls are excellent. Unitizing your gas cylinder may improve your accuracy, but it is a job best done by a skilled M14 armorer and is seldom necessary.

A NM front sight may help, too.

[SoL]

damned good to hear!!

i will do those things you mentioned

so that 600 rifle
basically works out as the best thing ever

I got a 300 trade in on my bushranger
and a 200 tax refund

WHOO!

[SoL]

what is this NM thing?

also it comes with a muzzlebrake but i'm gonna be using a suppressor

[M14sRock]

Sorry, I was in a hurry when I typed my previous response. NM is National Match abbreviated to NM. Brownells has the Smith Enterprise NM front sight, but it is almost $42. The most common NM width is .062.

You may want to look for a nice tight USGI synthetic stock. They used to be easy to find and cheap, but supplies are drying up now. For a general use stock the USGI synth are hard to beat.

Got any pics of your rifle?

[SoL]

ahh ok now we have hit something

is the synthetic stock LITERALLY just all around better, coz i can get that for an extra NZ$50.

Unsure who/if we would have a Brownells supplier here but i'll look into it.

[M14sRock]

Yes, the USGI synth is better than the wood, though MUCH uglier. Ha. But fun to paint. The Chu wood stocks the ChiComs used to come with were hideous. Don't know if they are better now.

[SoL]

well yeah, the wood looks brilliant

the one instance as a straight man i can say I want wood.

WOOD! I assume it will be slighly heavier, but yeah, wood m14 for my soul.