What's Your Experience in Accurizing an M1A?

Shot the M1A Scout again yesterday, no bragging rights groups. No new problems, not much left to do until I can shim the barrel band and tighten up the cylinder lock up. I had fired a couple different hand loads, but with the gun shooting roughly 2 1/2 in groups at 100 yds., Every group had a tight cluster to tease me with high hopes of good accuracy, only to be opened up with unexplained fliers. All of my handloads outperformed Federal LC XM80C, nearly equaled FGMM , but further load developement is a waste of time and components until the remaining issues are corrected with the gun.

It was explained to me a long time ago that the M1A is a minute of man rifle, it's a battle rifle like the FAL, it gobbles up ammo and never stops and will go bang every time but I was told it was not capable of sub moa groups, I still love mine and I have done alot to it.

Understood. However, the accuracy of the M1A can be improved upon, many have done it, short of a full National Match upgrade. I think I can reasonably expect it to shoot 1 1/2 MOA with a few moderate upgrades.

Minor update. Since last time to the range I have installed a Sadlak NM Op rod spring guide and relieved the fiberglass hand guard so that it is free floated above the stock. I placed an order for the gas cylinder shims and a Schuster adjustable gas plug. These won't be in until after the first of the year. The next modifications will be a Smith Enterprise Gas lock Front Sight and Vortex flash hider. This will eliminate the dreaded Castle nut and make maintenance somewhat easier and may also help with accuracy to a slight degree by eliminating the tension from the castle nut. Who knows, we'll see.

nortac said:

Minor update. Since last time to the range I have installed a Sadlak NM Op rod spring guide and relieved the fiberglass hand guard so that it is free floated above the stock. I placed an order for the gas cylinder shims and a Schuster adjustable gas plug. These won't be in until after the first of the year. The next modifications will be a Smith Enterprise Gas lock Front Sight and Vortex flash hider. This will eliminate the dreaded Castle nut and make maintenance somewhat easier and may also help with accuracy to a slight degree by eliminating the tension from the castle nut. Who knows, we'll see.

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It will be interesting to see your next groups after the modifications.

Thread bump / very minor update. Installed the gas cylinder shims and the Schuster adjustable gas plug. I also installed the Tubb replacement hammer spring in the trigger group, easier than I thought. Now I'm waiting on the SEI Gas Lock Front Sight and their Vortex flash suppressor. Since I had to remove my Scout Scope to modify the hand guard, which is plastic by the way, not fiberglass like the old GI part, and am eliminating the original front sight/flash hider combo by using the afore mentioned GLFS from SEI, I will sight in with the irons first as I adjust the Schuster gas plug. Once that is done, I'll remount the Scout Scope and re-zero that. Then I'll be able to resume load development.

Smith Enterprises Vortex flash hider and Gas Lock Front Sight came in today and have been installed. Although I had already installed the gas cylinder shims, changing to the GLFS from the stock gas lock required swapping out the shims as they indexed differently. Luckily I had ordered another set of shims from SEI, as I had to mix and match to get the proper lock up. Unfortunately I have to work the weekend, so further shooting/testing will have to wait till next weekend.