I built this rifle several years ago and shot it quite a bit up until a year or so ago. This past week I took it out just for the fun of it and suddenly I have this problem of the bolt not picking up a round from the magazine. It will push the round just far enough forward for the bullet nose to enter the chamber then the head of the case drops down and the bolt rides up on the side of the case.
At first I thought it might be the Duracoated magazines, although I never had a problem with them before, so I switched to some brand new magazines. Same thing. Most of these brand new magazine have never had a cartridge inserted into them so it not like there would be spring fatigue. I have 20+ magazines and the problem happens with ALL of them. It is completely random. I may get 4-5 rounds to run or it may happen one after another and the number of rounds in the magazine makes no difference.
The magazines are fully, snuggly seated to the bottom of the receiver so they can't go any higher and they do not wiggle or wobble whatsoever.
I had installed USA followers and base plates so I swapped out the USA follower for the original follower in a couple of Duracoated and couple of new magazines. While I had them apart, I thoroughly cleaned them and even very lightly polished the feed lips a bit with some 500 grit cloth. No joy.
My next thought was perhaps I had my gas adjustment incorrect and was short stroking. Nope, fully closed, wide open or any where in between made no difference.
I inspected the bolt thinking the part that strips the round from the magazine was damaged or badly worn. I then compared it with the bolt in my 270-308 FAL and I can see absolutely no difference. In fact, I swapped the bolts and manually operated the rifle, I didn't fire because I didn't feel like messing with the head space, and it also malfunctioned the same way.
I am shooting the same ammunition that I have shot in all my FALs, of which I have had a dozen or so over the years, so I'm reasonably certain it is not an ammunition problem.
As I stated earlier, I did not have a problem until this past week so it is extremely frustrating for this to pop up out of the blue and nothing I have tried helps.
I could go to the FAL forum but, by and large, it is inhabited by a fairly large number of jerks and I would prefer not to take the usual verbal abuse that comes with posting a problem there.