Ah, I was waiting months for this part of the story to occur. Based on past history. No, not telling details.

Anyhoo, back to the Old Man Murray Firing Pin Vs. The Original.

We caught ALL of the cases. We were meticulous about this. MOST ended up in the canvas bag. A few we had to chase, including one that comically burst forth and flew 10 yards straight downrange, for no reason I can figure.

Brown bear and Ulyanovsk. 20 rounds of each. No popped primers.

The original Soviet firing pin strikes perfectly. Not too deep, not too soft. Just right.

Ah, but what about the Tula, which is notorious for being cheaply manufactured bullshit ammo, assembled by starving peasants in Mother Russia?

Every single one went bang, and no popped primers. (Also, I’ve been shooting Tula in various calibers for years, and think they get a bad rap for no reason.)

So. What does this mean?

I am not installing another Old Man Murray firing pin in my SKS, and I will be asking for a refund. And if Murray offers me a chance to pound sand on that refund, then hey. So be it.

Was this a scientific test? Nope. Too many variables were out of control. Could I have somehow gotten a batch of bad ammo that caused the spring to melt from popped primers? Definitely.

But that’s just it. I tore the bolt of my rifle apart upon returning home from the test. No melted pieces of primer or spring. The pin channel and pin itself were barely dirty (although the chamber and mag well of the rifle are positively filthy from this Russian shit. Then again, this was 80 rounds, an amount of ammo I would never need to blow off in a “real life” situation unless I decided to grab my SKS, head to a police station, and unlock the Five Star Spree Killing Dickhead achievement, which is about as likely as me deciding to nail my foot to the side of a pissed off walrus). No detritus at all. Why? Because the original Soviet pin is free floating, and has no spring to melt.

The OMM pin apparently popped primers on the same kind of ammo I normally shoot. This caused the spring to melt. Bad ammo or not, there was no problem with the original floating pin. The melted spring literally caused my rifle to not function any more. That, to me, is kind of a big fucking deal. Reliability, more than accuracy or sturdiness, is the mainstay of what I expect from my firearms. The OMM spring totally stopped a rifle from working. I’m not okay with that. If you click this link, OMM claims that this “upgrade” will “Make your SKS safer and more reliable!” That’s the exact opposite of what I experienced. What the spring-loaded pin did was fail, and fail in such a way that my rifle was neither safer, nor more reliable. Well, I guess that’s not 100% true – the rifle was VERY safe, because it would no longer function properly at all. And it was reliably unable to fire in that regard.

TL;DR: The Murray Firing Pin pops primers, and this causes it to fail. Save your money, and just stick with the floating pin that your SKS comes with. Unless you LIKE digging melted spring steel out of your bolt.

Arguments below.