I managed to get out to the range earlier this week for more testing. There were several objectives and I'll go over them one by one.
1. Continued function tests. I shot 86 rounds, ten of which were 1973 Romanian. The remainder were FNM dated from 1966 to 1973. I had one failure to feed which made a mess of the round. It was easy to clear. All I did was pull the charging handle to the rear and hold, remove the magazine, dump the bad round out the ejection port, replace the magazine and keep on rolling. The round was nicely mangled:
Here is a random sampling of ejected cases with 5 Romanian on the left (ignore the mangled FNM round) and 5 Portugese on the right:
2. As the rifle warmed up, I began to have problems with it locking up again. Not as bad as before but I still had to place the charging handle on the edge of the table and push with moderate force. I began to hold the charging handle to the rear when changing magazines to get around the problem. I'm hoping the problem disappears as the rifle continues to wear in. At this point, my analysis of the wear marks on the bolt behind the locking lugs convinces me that the problem is tolerances being too tight.
3. Once zeroed, the scope held it even after being removed and reinstalled on the rifle. Accuracy is, as stated before, about the same as an SKS:
Final 27 rounds of the day at 100 yards:
This is not a target rifle nor did I expect it to be. However, I was plinking at fist sized objects laying in the backstop which is at about 110 yards and hitting them one after the other with no problem. For some reason, I shoot at objects better than I do paper targets so the rifle is more accurate than you see above.
4. The blue locktite on the scope screws seems to have done the job. I put pencil lines on the rings as index marks prior to the range trip and the screws did not move. More rounds will tell the tale as to whether or not this is a viable fix. If it proves to be, I'll go over everything at that time.
Front band index mark:
Rear band index mark:
When the scope is attached, the locking levers do not turn fully to their front stops:
I do not think that they are necessarily supposed to but it is worth noting so that you don't get too excited should you buy one and have the same thing happen. What is important is that they do not move during use and mine have not. Again, we're only talking 86 rounds here. Much more testing is required before I can give a real opinion. I can say though, that the optics on the Meopta scope are crystal clear.
5. Now for the bad. The trigger pull is back to rusty ratchet status. I did not remove it and take pictures but I can see it when looking into the back of the receiver and I can definitely feel it. After just a few shots, I could feel that it was going south and the problem became worse and worse. After only 86 rounds, the sear looks just as bad as it did before I dressed it. This problem is simply unacceptable. I don't know if I just got a poorly hardened one or it's systematic but I will be contacting SMG about it. I will report my findings. That's it for now and I will continue reporting back as testing progresses.