Crap East Euro steel ak47 mag won't fit yugo ak

[aestus]

Bought 4 mags from centerfire systems that came in today. They're the cheap steel Easter Europ mags. A little disappointed with the quality since there seems to be slight corrosion inside the mag on some of them and the follower doesn't glide smoothly at all. Very rough and gritty.

Anyways, the problem I have is kind of the opposite of usual problems in that I have a Century built Yugo M70AB2 underfolder and these mags won't fit in the magwell at all. Usually people have problems with the mags being too loose. Well in my gun it's not even tight, it just won't plain fit.

I do have 1 mag that came with the gun and it's butter smooth and glides right in and there's very little wobble. These mags from centerfire system seem to be thicker/wider than mine. Looks like the mags are a whole 1mm too thick. Seems like these mags would be great for people with WASR 10's with problems with overly loose mags.

Anyways, is it worth it to try and file off some of the thickness from the sides of the magazines to make them fit or should I sell them off and pay more money for yugo/chinese mags?

 

[imacgyver]

most of those mags come soaked in cosmoline - Clean them out and do not oil them. Mags should be dry - second, those are military surplus, rust is normal but a good tight fit is what you want in a comm bloc steel mag - mag wobble is the pits.

so how do you fix your mags to fit better? I'll show you - you need to grind down (rasp or dremel) the mags to fit smoothly in the mag well.

The feed lips are reinforced with an overlapping steel plate - you need to grind down the corners at the point where you insert the mags into the mag well. Here are some pics.

If the metal is thicker than the mags that came with yours, it will be obvious.

front

Right side

Left side - minor grinding

left side mag 2 - major grinding - very thick

left side mag 2 - major grinding at the corner for initial fit.

 

[imacgyver]

Fix these yet? If not do you want to part with them?

 

[aestus]

Yeah, took it to my Dad's in Lawton and used his industrial grider to grind about 1mm off both sides of the magazine. They now fit snugly inside the magewell of the Yugo. Before I grinded the sides down, I let a friend with try these with a WASR-10 that had extreme mag wobble issues. Just as I thought, these fit snugly into his WASR 10 and had no wobble. These mags were either waaayy off spec being overly too thick, or made for loose converted WASR-10's.

Two of them are now assembled and now I just need to test them with ammo. The other two are still in rust cleanup phase. These two have rust and pitting extending down inside the whole side of the mags, the followers are pitted and rusted and the springs are also rusted all the way through. One of the springs even looks like it's brittle and bout to break.

Anyways, lesson learned. Not going to buy bulk eastern euro surplus mags without inspection. The work put into grinding the sides down 1mm on both sides, plus the misshaped followers and rust just wasn't worth the price. If I do buy online, I'll be sure to buy more expensive yugo or chinese mags.


JP if you're looking for more mags, someone from "the other forums" PM'd me that he has 15 steel mags he was selling for $12 a piece.