[djskit]

Was at the range this weekend and noticed a guy with an M-14, the real deal with the welded full auto switch and all. "Where did you get that?" I asked. "Friend of a friend" was his vauge relpy.
I drop by later an his rifle is in pieces!
Apparantly, the extractor broke, left the brass in the chamber and all the internal bolt parts compeltely flew apart. No injuries, no serious damage but we could not find the extractor, even with a large mangnet.
The brass dropped out of the chamber with a light tap of a cleaning rod and looked fine (some surplus nato ammo) and the rim looked OK too.
Our guess was that the extractor just gave up, no other real problem that we can think of.
Any thoughts?

 

[Mark whiz]

Sounds like just an extractor failure..............not an uncommon occurance in these guns - especially if this was a well-used gun. The spring gets weak & the ejector gets pulled out by the case when the op rod moves the bolt.

A new spring & ejector should have the rifle up & running in no time.