I just picked up a CZ 550 in 458 Lott. The lousy POS won't feed.

It picks up the first round about 50% of the time. It never feeds the second round or any of the others.

The claw extractor never picks up the round instead it push feeds them into the upper right hand corner of the chamber at a ridiculous angle and jams solid.

Any simple ideas?

Outside of sending this POS back to CZ..

If you touch it they may not take it back.. I would call CZ USA and tell it's coming back to them.

Shoulda got a Ruger RSM instead, you wouldn't go through all this crap with an inferior gun. Most CZ's coming out of the factory is just plain SHIT. Absolutely no quality control whatsoever. To paraphrase some OLD dude, "Where there's smoke, there's fire."

475 GUY,

I totally agree. This CZ is worst piece of crap I've laid eyes on in quite some time. Doesn't feed doesn't function and it looks like it was hammered together out of old fence posts and spare rod iron parts. Fit and finish is somewhere between rough and better wear gloves so you don't get a splinter.

This rifle was a trade deal from a guy. Now I'm stuck with it. ANYBODY WHO RECOMENDS A CZ 550 TO ANYBODY FOR ANY PURPOSE IS A FRIGGIN MORON!!!!

What a peice of shit!!!

And new in the box to boot..

God I hate cheap crapola rifles..

May just need a little dremel work on the feed ramp. I'm not expert at this but had a 458 Win. (not a CZ) that didn't want to feed the second round smoothly, Jeffeoso showed me where to run the dremel and 15 minutes later it was smooth as could be. Maybe one of the guys in gunsmithing could explain it better.

good luck

Maybe I'll post over there. I really don't want the time trouble and expense of sending this Lead Zeplin anywhere.

Send it off to Lon Paul, he will make the corrections and you will have a rifle that you will be proud to own. They just need a little hand work to get them to were they need to be.

Lemons happen, sorry to say, and it's always the bad ones you hear about.

send it back to CZ

jeffe

I handled another CZ today and was really not impressed with them. why is it when you really open the bolt fast and try to work the action, they bind up. I just don't see the attraction to the CZ's, the fit and finish even as far as factory rifles go is pretty poor.

a lot of the custom ones are really nice but, off the rack ones need a lot of work just to make them shootable?

Just pretend it's a winchester and send it back to the factory.

quote:

Originally posted by surestrike:
475 GUY,

I totally agree. This CZ is worst piece of crap I've laid eyes on in quite some time. Doesn't feed doesn't function and it looks like it was hammered together out of old fence posts and spare rod iron parts. Fit and finish is somewhere between rough and better wear gloves so you don't get a splinter.

This rifle was a trade deal from a guy. Now I'm stuck with it. ANYBODY WHO RECOMENDS A CZ 550 TO ANYBODY FOR ANY PURPOSE IS A FRIGGIN MORON!!!!

What a peice of shit!!!

And new in the box to boot..

God I hate cheap crapola rifles..

I am not a friggen moron....I have reccomended them to people as I have five that have performed well....had issues with one, I owned for an hour and returned it but it was a 22/250 on an 06 length action.

I can't stand people who run there trash mouths 10 yards in front of there brain either...I think there morons

Hey, what do you want for 800 bucks? Yes, they aren't the highest quality rifle out of the box, but they can be made to work. My Lott also had feeding problems, but it can be fixed. You are right that it shouldn't come from the factory with such critical problems, but the CZ IMHO isn't a bad foundation.

I had a 458 that fed and functioned fine. I used it for about five years and sold it for what I had in it. Never had a problem with it. CZ sent no rings with it but it had the box, instructions, and factory tools. Send me your Lott. Being the wonderful person I am, I will send you the freight cost when the rifle gets here. Packrattusnongratus

Sad to say, but not newsworthy: In this mass production world, quality control slips and lemons do make it out the door.

Send it--along with a letter describing the problem(s)--to the factory for reworking.

Surestrike,

I found three simple things that can cause major feed issues that are easily corrected.

1. You can have a small burr between the bolt face and ejector claw that keeps the cartridge head from slipping behind the claw. It is easy to verify that the cartridge head slips in place and can be easily corrected if it is a burr.

* Reference 2 & 3, The magazine follower and spring must give to allow the cartridge being loaded to come out of the box and slip over the cartridge below it or over the ridge on the follower. Then the cartridge head will pop up behind the ejector claw. The two things I often see that interfere w/ this are:

2. The welded joint of the magazine box has burrs that cause the follower to stick or bind. Easily corrected by removing the burrs and minor polishing.

3. The follower itself was not shaped correctly at the factory. This is easily corrected if you know what you are doing but can be a pain in the arse if you are going by the seat of your pants. My gunsmith (he's a guild member) looked at a CZ of mine that had a binding follower and reshaped it and corrected the problem in less time than it took me to drive over to his shop. What he did was machine a relief cut on the left side of the follower and did some minor polishing. He said the relief cut eliminates the follower from binding. It worked. Well just by chance I was looking at a Winchester Supergrade follower from a post-64 M70 and the Winchester follower had the same relief cut and looked almost just like mine after the machine work. I tried the Winchester follower and it works just as well in my CZ. I now carry a Winchester follower as a spare.

I would suggest that if your follower is binding as in (3), that you try the follower from a Winchester if you have one available. Anything from a long action on up thru magnum size should work. You would need to use the Winchester spring as well but it should go in w/ out any modifications.

If the problem is not related to 1 - 3, then I would suggest sending it back to CZ as it would probably require machining, deburring or polishing on the receiver itself.

Hope this is of some help. For those who do not have access to a Winchester follower, I'll take some pictures of my CZ follower so you can see how my smith modified it.

Gary

Ok now ya'll got me worried. I've only shot mine about 10 or 15 times, and they were all loaded one at a time. Guess i'm gonna have to load up a bunch and run it through the mill.

PC

You need to chill. You need to learn to ignore some stuff on the internet. After a couple of near-death incidents in the past two years, I've decided that this site ain't Life-or-Death. This site is just a place to hang out. surestrike didn't specifically point a finger at you, he was just venting.

Gurn,

I always shoot my bolt guns from a full magazine... Load it and fire like that instead of single-loading. If it's purely a target rifle yeah who cares - single loading is fine. But for a hunting rifle or a rifle for possible use against ornery critters you want to know that it feeds 110% of the time. This will soon tell you whether it's got problems that need to be corrected. It also assures you the magazine floor plate won't fly open when you fire and other highly undesireable stunts rifles sometimes do when untested.

I always as a matter of course use a very fine piece of sandpaper and polish the magazine lips and rails, the feed ramp, etc. This eliminates most jams or hang-ups and also keeps the mag lips from scarring your brass cases if you fire your brass multiple times. Some are surprisingly sharp from the factory.

Single loading is only for target rifles IMHO...

Ok checked her out better. Shes working and feeding fine. I also took note of the wood metal fit and finish. looks fine to me.
Now I'm a happy CZ camper again.

Another vote for CZ.
Mine feeds like greased monkey snot and shoots straight.
Worst modern gun I've had was a Ruger in 7x57. On the other hand my little 77 RSI in 243 shoots nice tight groups
As some one said, lemons do get out now and then.

Surestrike

In my experience it would b no different to buying a model 70 out the box. I did so recently and it was the biggest piece of rubbish. However, after a trigger change, stock change, new iron sights, and some TLC from a good gunsmith, its a very different rig.

As the other guys here have pointed out, someone who knows what he is going will turn your rifle into what you want.

If you want a perfect fit & finished rifle out the box, buy a Sako 75. Its the only one out of the cheaper, more mundane rifles.

I agree that the CZ's are the roughest ones out there. I got severly flamed for saying that here before, so I usually stay out of these discussions. I have seen them on average to be much more crude than the M70, 700, 77, whatever. Fit and finish is atrocious. They are cheap, so they sell a lot of them

As far as the European Lux models go, I've seen quite a few well made ones out of the box. Though they may have a few burrs to polish, not really bad at all. The checkering and wood might not be the best but the European models almost always have the better wood, checkering and inletting. I have a 375 Safari Mag/European Lux that has wood as nice as my Ruger RSM (which looks as good as any I've seen), and is inletted almost perfect. It also printed cloverleaf groups out of the box, w/ the sights almost dead on.

Flip side of the coin, I've never seen an American version that looked good to me (though I'm sure they exist). I've handled approx. 10 or 15 American stocked Safari models and all had blocky unrefined stocks made of lower grade wood w/ poor checkering and sloppy inletting. I don't know why this is, unless they are stocked in Kansas while the Lux models are stocked at CZ.

If you get the kinks out, the CZ is as solid, reliable and accurate as any.

Gary

I don't think its just CZ that puts out stinkers now and then. The first and only Remington bolt I ever bought in my life was a 338 RUM. This was a brand new loading so I'm think the tooling should in fairly good shape. Well the barrel look like someone ran a rat tailed course wood file through the bore. Sent it back and had it rechambered to 375 RUM, now it's ok.
I've also had some very bad experiences with Winchester Ruger and Browning, except they were more expensive than a CZ

I had a new 458 brno about ten years ago and the damn thing would not feed at all and did just like you said ,i also had a new brno 243 27 years ago and the damn thing would jam all the time until i removed a ridge in the magazine ,and then it still jammed on occasion.I have a Brno 458 ,rebarreled to a 340 and it feeds perfectly.Another thing is they dont oil the barrels when they leave the factory they just testfire them and dump them in the box

Guys I'm not comparing one rifle to another here. I am just saying this one is a certified no B.S. peice of crap. Every thing about it sucks..

Don't even get me started on modern Winchesters and those quality control problems. No news here on that one.

I as a free man choose to never have anything to do with a friggin CZ ever again. Get over it..

surestrike,

What are you doing with the rifle? Did you see my first post?

If you've given up on it, box it up well w/ plenty of packing material as I suspect your particular rifle is demonic and may cause misery to anyone handling it. It just so happens I'm trained to handle such situations and can properly dispose of this demon rifle if you mail it to me. Once I take possession of the rifle I'll gladly give you updates on the different ways I'll torture this rifle for years to come.

Gary

Ive' got a Rem 700 , a Model 70 and just bought a CZ 527 . The CZ is the best finished of the 3 . All steel , has wood that you'd only get on a custom shop rifle from the other 2. Put 3 shots into 0.45 this morning when I commenced load testing with the 35 V Max .
A friend has a CZ 550 in .22/250 and it too is very well finished and accurate .
Could it be that they're not made in the U.S. that makes them such a P.O.S. ?

Velodog?
Just wondering, have you ever shot a dog while you were riding a bicycle?

Bushchook

You don't seem to get it. We're talking about the CZ bigbore so-called-safari rifles that have so many problems. The smallbores don't have that problem at all.

quote:

Originally posted by Bushchook:
Could it be that they're not made in the U.S. that makes them such a P.O.S. ?

Bushchook,

I guess you missed the part about this rifle miss-feeding and jamming solid on every round?

Or that it's finished in a peice of ill fitting genuine mother of fence post?

None of this has anything to do the nationality of the rifle, only a severe lack of quality.

In fact sir, your comment is so far off the mark I have to wonder if you've read any of the above posts or are simply trying to get some attention to a personal agenda?

I don't know your mechanical abilities or your level of courage when dealing with guns. I expect the problem is in the follower or mag box. First I'd check that the mag spring in inserted in the follower correctly. It's obvious, but I've seen them so loose the spring is not held in place. Check that the follower moves smoothly up and down the mag box. If not find where it binds and grind off the high spot. The follower must move smoothly in the box. Check that the mag box foreward metal isn't overhanging the feed ramp. If so bend it slightly with pliers. Finally sometimes the CZ feed ramp is too narrow. Open it up with a dremel a little at a time. Test the feeding with the cartridge you intend to use. SP's will take more work than solids generally. No effense but in the world of gun problems, this is really minor. You can always send it back or take it to a decent gunsmith if the above is too much. -Rob

Robgunbuilder,

No offense taken,

I've already played with the spring tension on the follower. That is always the firstplace I look for feeding problems. I'll have a look at some of your other suggestions as well.

Thank you for the constructive and informative post

Surestrike ,
No offense mean't if you're not suffering from xenophobia . You gave the CZ such a slagging that I wondered whether you had an anti - European agenda yourself .
The recent CZ's I have seen have been quite well finished . Hard to believe they can turn out a rifle that is as bad as you wrote , particularly when it comes to stock timber .Most of the CZ wood that we see in Oz seems to be of a very high standard compared to the bland material used in the majority of factory handles these days .
Do any of the firearms manufacturers employ quality control staff these days ?

CZ's are "okay".. finish is about the same as a savage, so it's a "it depends".. as an advertising FACT.. before the internet, only 5% of annoyed customers complained, afterwards that went to about 30%... and less than 1% post approval if expectations are merely met or slightly exceeded....

What bullets are you using? This does make a difference... i doubt you are using some flatpoint vs a RN, but it would be nice to know.

The worst cz finish i've ever seen (on a very near the end 602) was about the same as a chinses sks.. pretty rough, but 2 hours of clean up, it worked great.

Most people complain of the OVER finish on the CZs.. to brightly polished, lines knocked out of whack, etc....

jeffe

The last 2 batches of CZ's that arrived in this country were very rough, and in .458 Win will not feed soft points- Have yet to see one that will! Still, for the price, you take it to a gun smith, have the stock glass beded -(you need to or it will start cracking in short order in a dry climate), get the burs taken off, the action polished, the safety catch tightened... Cost you US$100 here for that and you have a good rifle. Add $50 to have the barrrel shortened to 22" and the sight re-installed. Unless you are lucky, you will not get a factory rifle that is Dangerous Game ready direct from the factory any more.

Rugers are great-but.. too heavy in the barrel and the gun smithing work to make the .416 rigby's reliable is about the same as working over a CZ. If the rifle fits you, Feels good in your hands, get it fixed and set up properly and be happy ever after.

quote:

Originally posted by Bushchook:
Surestrike ,
No offense mean't if you're not suffering from xenophobia . You gave the CZ such a slagging that I wondered whether you had an anti - European agenda yourself .
The recent CZ's I have seen have been have been quite well finished . Hard to believe they can turn out a rifle that is as bad as you wrote , particularly when it comes to stock timber .Most of the CZ wood that we see in Oz seems to be of a very high standard compared to the bland material used in the majority of factory handles these days .
Do any of the firearms manufacturers employ quality control staff these days ?

Not that it matters but I believe the new 404, 450 & 505s are being assembled and completed here in the good ole USA. Also there is a lot of talk that since their sales increased roughly 300% they have traded volume for quality at the Czech plant. Hopefully all the newbie workers will get trained up and the quality will come back

Barrel heavy GOOD for off hand shooting.. (53%, not 75% weight dist.)

yesterday I was shooting a friends cz 416, ruger 458, and my 550.... consistantly better groups at 50, off hand, with the ruger and 550... while decent, the cz wandered ALOT

barrel heavy GOOD... one of my biggest complaints of the cz is the skinny barrel

jeffe

quote:

What bullets are you using? This does make a difference... i doubt you are using some flatpoint vs a RN, but it would be nice to know.

jeffe

Jeffe,

The two loads that I've tried are 500gr Woodleigh SP and the 500gr Hornandy SP.

After taking a good look at this thing the following things work correctly. The magazine box has no rough spots. The follower moves freely. The mag box does not interfere with the feed ramp.

When you work the bolt slowly the bolt pushes the back of the round as it should but before the rim of the round clears the aft part of the feed lips the round is already stuffed in the aft part of the chamber at a very steep angle and the nose of the bullet is jammed against the the top of the chamber entrance.

If you tap the bolt slowly when the rim clears the aft feed lip it will sometime pop into the extractor grove. If you work it hard it will push feed the round into the chamber. Sometimes popping the extractor over the rim and some times just jamming solid.

I guess we'll now see how good the customer service at CZ is.....

One additional thing you can do is "round" the bottom of the extractor claw-hook and put a small bevel on it so that the rim of the cartridge easily "pops" up into the extractor smooth as silk. I've had any number of CZ 550's with sharp edges on the extractor hook that interfered with their feeding. Watch exactly where the rim first makes contact with the extractor hook and round this surface a little with a swiss file,then bevel it slightly from the boltface side and polish it a bit with some 600 grit sandpaper. If things improve do a little more until it's dead smooth. If this doesn't work the shape of the rails need to be modified. Remember what you want is the round to lie flat under the rail and pop up into the claw/boltface in as straightline a manner as possible. Note where the cartridge is starting to angle off and remove a little metal at a time till it goes in smoothly. Use a Swiss File not a dremel tool!-Rob

quote:

Originally posted by 475Guy:
Shoulda got a Ruger RSM instead, ...

I do not mean to defend CZ. But a good big bore gunsmith can get a CZ working perfectly. However, the Ruger has some ejection problems when in rapid fire mode. And on some of the rifles, this has not been a correctable problem.

Just a heads up...