Alrighty. By August 13th, I had taken the rifle out to the range twice, both times with the magazines that came with the rifle. The first time was 30 rounds of reload ammunition that came from someone who used to own an original matching MP44. I saw the rifle some years ago but I never fired it nor do I remember who made it or when. I only remember that it was in VERY nice condition. He passed on and the family sold the rifle but I was given all of the ammunition including German wartime, Czech, East German and reloads made from 30.06 and .308 cases. I was also given components including empty fired cases and formed cases that were ready to reload as well as Hornady and Speer 125gr bullets. Bear with me, as I am going somewhere with all of this. I know that the reloads must have worked in his original MP44 even though the shoulder profile is quite different than the factory steel case stuff. I know this because I have a large bag of fired brass that looks just like the loaded rounds. Now, my question was....would it work in my rifle? Why no, no it wouldn't. Out of 30 rounds I tried (ten rounds per magazine each time), only 13 would allow the bolt to close. Those thirteen had shoulder profiles most like (although still unlike) period factory rounds. They fired but either he down loaded them or they stuck in the chamber pretty good because all but a couple fell out of the ejection port about three inches and plopped down on the table. A couple flew but only about five feet. However, they are now fire formed to my chamber so I pretty much know what it looks like in there. The ones that would not chamber would bind the action up pretty good, requiring me to bang the charging handle on the edge of the table to get the action open. So, did his original rifle have a sloppy chamber? I don't know....maybe? So the first range trip was a failure but I kind of expected it given the shoulder profile on the rounds.
That night night after cleaning, I removed the firing pin and put five rounds of East German in the magazine. They fed and ejected just fine although I did have one case of the bolt not picking up a round. I know that is a problem with SSD magazines. So, I was confident for the second range trip. I picked out the most beat up box of 1961 DDR rounds out of the stash and another box of 11 mixed DDR rounds from 1958 and 1961.
The nest day, I headed out again with 19 rounds of 1961 DDR and 7 rounds of 1958 DDR. One magazine had 15 rounds while the other had 11. I had one case of the bolt not picking up a round in each magazine. I also had 7 dud rounds that did not go off. However, I had no jams of any kind and, while I was primarily testing function and not accuracy, I had no problem hitting approx. 5 " rocks at 100 yards. I didn't even bother to take a target, preferring instead to just aim at objects lying in the berm.
Let's look at some rounds first:
Starting from the left, we have a 1943 German round, a 1946 Czech, 1962 East German, fired 1961 East German, form fired reload from my rifle and reload that would not chamber in my rifle. Remember that all of the reloads are formed from 30.06 and .308 brass. Note the much less distinct shoulder profile on the unusable reload compared with everything to the left of it.
Here are 5 random DDR cases that I fired:
I will get some Privi Partisan as my primary ammo but I don't have any yeti. I'll probably end up reloading too at some point.
Now on to the bolt and carrier. First up is the bolt. At this point its round count is 82. I'm using the one numbered to the rifle until Dingo's are imported. It looks like it is a getting good purchase on the locking block:
Where it interacts with the locking cam on the carrier looks ok:
Looking at the bolt from the front, we can see that the left claw on the carrier is engaging it more than the right BUT it was like this before I installed the new carrier so that doesn't tell us much given the low round count:
There is also a bit of peening where the web on the carrier hits. BUT these marks were there BEFORE today and ARE NOT caused by the new carrier:
There is some crud in there that makes the curved area look rough and beat but it's smooth. The peening is on either side of that area just where the radius begins. Problem or normal? I have no idea as I have no prior experience with these rifles.
The carrier has a round count of 32.
Left side of unlocking claw area looks fine:
Several shots from different angles of the right side showing some peening of the web.
These marks were not there before I fired it. Again, normal or not, I do no know. I only post them because they are there. I have rifles that exhibit peening of parts as they mate so it does not particularly bother me so long as it does stop at some point. You guys with original carriers, have you seen this before? Again, I am NOT saying this is bad because I have zero experience with these rifles so I don't yet know what is normal and what is cause for concern. Time will tell.
After writing this, I spoke with Tor at D-K Production Group about the peening on the carrier. He agreed with me that it looks like normal wear as the parts wear in to each other. Others who looked at the wear agreed as well. There is a man I call the "MP44 Wizard" (he wishes to remain anonymous) who knows these rifles like the back of his hand. Soon, I will be sending the rifle to him for a thorough going over but he wanted me to run some rounds through it first to see what I had so that he would have some idea what needed attention and what did not. So, I ordered some Privi Partizan ammunition and wait for it to arrive.
Two weeks later I had some Privi Partizan ammo in hand and off to the range I want again. I managed to get 75 totally frustrating rounds down the pipe before giving up and heading home. The rifle was nothing short of a jamomatic. Every single stoppage was a failure to feed which led me to believe that the magazines were the problem. The factory manual says quote:
" NOTE THE 30 RD MAGAZINES SHOULD ONLY BE LOADED TO 20 RDS FOR IT TO FUNCTION PROPERLY. The reason for this is that the magazines were made to original WWII ammunition specifications which differ from present German proof house specifications. The slight difference in the cartridge dimensions cause feeding malfunctions if the magazines are loaded with more than 20 rds."
Being that it fed pretty well with East German ammunition, I can believe that there is a dimensional difference between PPU rounds and WWII/DDR/Czech rounds. However, it didn't matter how few or how many modern rounds were loaded into the new made magazines, they just simply were not going to work with the PPU ammo.
Now, original MP44's were known to be magazine sensitive and troops were told not to load more than 25 rounds in the magazines in any event so I have every reason to believe that the new ones are picky about what you shove into them as well! To compound the matter, it is a well known fact among PTR44 owners that the magazines shipped out with the PTR44's were highly suspect both in dimensioning and quality control.
There was also the potential problem of an undersized chamber. Yep.....another potential issue. Apparently, some of the PTR44's had chambers that were undersized which, of course, is a bad thing. Some customers noticed that their chambers appeared to be reamed, sometimes rather crudely I might add, in an effort to correct the problem. Some had chamber issues and some did not. Mine shows no sign of reaming but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. Whatever the case, you can't diagnose something when you have multiple things going on. You HAVE to remove as many variables as possible so that you can tackle the problem systematically. So, to that end and at 157 rounds, I was done shooting this thing until I could get my hands on some proper government produced magazines of known Quality. We'll take that up in the next post.
LOL Keep it coming. 
