Remington 552 light primer strike cause

[Rex in OTZ]

I had a project that had started in the spring of 2016 and just recently had development twards a fix to light primer strikes of a july 1971 Remington 552.

In May 2016 the Rem 552 Jam-A-Matic entered my life.
This is my hypothesis on Why a Remington 552 can go from Ole reliable to the jamming, light striking .22 rifle from the lowest depths of
Dante's Inferno.
The very first time I tried to fire the rifle I had problems.
This particular .22 had began its service in Alaska's bush camp setting.
It quit working and the campers brought it into town as trade stock on something else.
I found many things wrong with this rifle, mainly out of spec parts and bent, broken and cracked parts.
I had failure to fire, failuer to eject, failure to feed.
It was only after all that time working with this rifle that a few things became clear.
The dry firing after the last round was spent causes minor damage to the rim area of the cartridge chamber.
Little by little the firing pin over time expands the head space.
The 1971 era 552 might have had many numerous time the chamber was filed? Ironed?
Once? Twice? 6 times? Since 1971?
As the chamber slowly goes out of tolerance it will exhibit a liking for certain brands or types of cartridges.
Due the varing degree of case demensions and brass hardness.
It slowly goes out of spec till you have light primer hits.
Even after replacing most the major parts in the hammer group.
The bolt group and some parts like the ejector/bolt guide.
I replace the bolt return spring with new, replaced the 48 year old magazine spring, the extractor and its spring, hammer, hammer spring, replaced broken disconnector and cracked cartridge lifter.
I had replaced the bolt buffer pad
I must have scraped, brushed, filed, sanded and hone stone more parts than needed.
All in the hopes Id get the free .22 to work.
All the time chasing down every little symptom of the underlying problem.
Dry firing.
In the end I kept thinking the light strikes were hammer related.
The hammer works great and has one weakness the hammer spring plunger, make sure its not bound up with 48 year old lube varnish mixed with burnt powder carbon.
The rifle would cycle alum dummy rounds through the mag to the chamber and eject them flawlessly by hand.
Put some live rounds in the mag and its evil side would show up.
As the chamber slowly errodes the cartridges can stick, once the sticking spent casing problem was fixed, it would just set off only 22% of the rounds chambered.
As the chamber support ebbed away the rifle was picky about ammo.
The one solution was How do I bring the bolt ahead to improve on the headspace?
You remove a little bit of material from the butt end of the barrel extension that the bolt contacts.
You dont need to remove much material just whiten it some should improve the light primmer strike from excessive headspace.



https://www.gunandgame.com/threads/reminton-552-with-a-tummy-ache.181962/

https://www.firearmstalk.com/threads/552-remington-speedmaster-rear-sight.119783/

 

[entropy]

I usually broke those down and put the useable parts in the bins. We always had a good stock of 552, 572, and 740 series parts.

 

[Rex in OTZ]

My very first hammer spring I bought for it was from Numrich Gun Parts.
I was jazzed when it arrived.
After pulling it down to replace the hammer spring, the Used spring from Numrich was Shorter than the one removed from Ole Jammy.
That was y lesson with buying used springs.
Error on the side of new springs.
The old return spring was almost 2 inches longer than the new return spring, that might explain why .22 shorts wernt cycling.
The old hammer spring was 3/16" shorter than the new spring.
The old magazine spring was over 14" shorter than the new magazine spring.
The extractor spring also had taken a Set.
If you can buy new springs for your firearm, Get Them!
If your buying used springs compare them to what your removing.
Also as for storing your hammer spring compressed? You might want to release the hammer for storage.
I thought 48 years of being cocked may have contributed to some to the light strikes at first.
Same with storing the magazine with a few rounds inside might have been part of the weak feeding.
Those yellow drywall anchors will cycle right through and chamber in the Remington 552.
If the yellow drywall anchors start sticking from too many dry fires, replace them with new.
When you load your magazine make sure the last round is a yellow drywall anchor and you reduce the chances of dry firing on a empty chamber.