I started to hint at this problem in another thread of mine here about casting and loading for this rifle, but I thought since it's a new topic and new problem perhaps I should start a new thread.
I picked up a new to me Winchester 1894 AE in 30-30. This is my first lever action so I'm pretty clueless with these things. Manually cycling different types of ammo as well as my own cast at several different OAL, 90% of them end up in a failure to feed.
The round is able to eject from the tube and onto the carrier. The carrier lifts the round with the cartridge nose pointed to the chamber. The problem starts when the bolt pushes the cartridge forward, the cartridge gets stuck at an angle. If I move the bolt back a smidge, it seems the carrier is able to pop the round up and I can close the action and feed the round. If I slowly closed the action, sometimes the rim of the case would pop up high enough to clear a small gouge in the left ejector guide. Then the cartridge would feed normally and the bolt would close just fine. Other times, I would slowly close the bolt and watch the rim of the case not pop up and head straight for the gouge and get stuck in it. If I released pressure on the lever, the cartridge would pop up and ride over the gouge and feed like normal.
I don't think the nose is getting jammed into the chamber as there are no obvious marks on the bullet itself, but after some online research I believe the rim may be getting caught on the ejector guides. I decided to take it apart and try to verify for myself. Sure enough, the left sided ejector guide had a huge gouge in it. The right one had a smaller one.
I decided to try my luck and ordered a used left ejector guide from Numrich. Hopefully it'll solve my problem.
I'm just wondering if the ejector guide isn't the problem and the carrier isn't lifting the rear of the case high enough to cause the case rim to smash into the ejector guide in the first place.
Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks for you time!