Post by mg34dan on Nov 22, 2007 22:48:31 GMT 1
I know some of you out there are allowed to own and shoot full auto Vickers MMGs. I would like to pass on my experiences with Vickers caliber conversions. First a little background; I live in Austin Texas and shoot with Dolf Goldsmith who lives in San Antonio which is located 100 miles south of Austin. My Vickers was built by Pat Tomlinson using a US 1918 11mm Aircraft Vickers and a 1942 Australian parts kit. It was built specifically to shoot 8mm Mauser using Turkish 8mm parts (extractor, feed block, and barrel). According to Dolf, “Never install the barrel cup when shooting 8mm because 8mm is much more powerful than .303 and it will beat the crap out of your gun.” I always heed his advice. I use 1943 Australian tabbed belts and 8mm Romanian 1970’s steel cased ammo and my Vickers runs like a top 100% of the time.
I acquired a South African 7.62 NATO conversion consisting of a complete lock, feed block, barrel, some links, and a belt puller. Thanks to Peter Wells I acquired additional SA links to keep me happy for a while. With the SA 7.62 NATO conversion installed, my Vickers again runs 100% of the time using Malaysian, South African, Australian, Radway Green, and Winchester white box 7.62 NATO ammo. But ammo prices are rising so I decided to get my Vickers to run in 30-06 Springfield because CMP is selling 30-06 at about half the cost of either 8mm or 7.62 NATO.
The first challenge was to find the required components, barrel and feed block. Since the 8mm Mauser round and 30-06 Springfield round share the same head size, my 8mm Turkish extractor will work in this conversion. I was able to locate two barrels and a feed block on eBay, believe it or not. The feed block was complete except the upper feed arm was buggered up. I replaced it with the upper feed arm from the original 11mm lock that came with my Aircraft Vickers. I can also use the barrel muzzle cup from the US Aircraft Vickers barrel with the US 30-06 barrels. But, both 30-06 barrels needed work. One was de-milled by brazing a bolt into the chamber. A trip to a local machinist remedied that. The other barrel was bent like an “S” at about six inches from the muzzle. It was also rusted shut at the muzzle. I found another machinist who was willing to tackle that repair. He did a fantastic job using a 50 ton hydraulic press, oak blocks, and a drill blank in the diameter of the barrel bore. He then counter bored the muzzle for about an inch to clean up the rusted area. I spent a weekend with a tap handle and a 30-06 chamber reamer slowly cleaning out both barrel chambers by hand. With all the new 30-06 parts installed in my Vickers, the action would not lock up. Dolf and I found that the extractor lifting arms on my lock were striking the face of the feed block. Since my lock originated with the original 11mm Aircraft Vickers, it’s lifting arms were thicker than those on .303 or 30-06 Vickers. But remember, it worked fine with the 8mm setup and the 7.62 SA setup. I swapped the 11mm lifting arms for those from a spare British .303 lock. That did the trick. After loading 1000 rounds of “US Lake City 1966” 30-06 ammo into Aussie belts we found the loaded belts jammed inside the 30-06 feed block. Only then did Dolf say “Didn’t you know WWI US cloth belts were thinner than British ones.” How in the hell would I know that? I don’t remember seeing it mentioned in your book. This is a nice time to find out!
Looking around, I found some aluminum Turkish Maxim belts. They have the correct pitch, they are thin, and they are easy to load by hand. I unloaded the Aussie belts, by hand, and loaded the Turkish belts. We were now ready to try everything out, so off to the range we go. We setup everything, filled the barrel jacket with water, loaded a belt, and got ready for some serious blasting. I sat down behind the Vickers, got my posterior comfortable, placed my hands correctly on the grip handles, lifted the safety, and pushed down on the butterflies. Nothing happened! Nothing! Not a d**n thing! After all the crap we went through, now what could be wrong? We pushed, prodded, poked, b*tched, and still nothing. It was now time to get serious. We rechecked the head space. It was OK. We checked the ammo. It looked perfect. We fired some in a Garand. It worked fine. We fired some in a 1919A4. That worked fine. What could the problem be? In disgust I slammed the top cover shut. The Vickers fired one shot!? I opened the top cover again and slammed it down. Another shot was fired. I did that about ten times and each time a shot was fired. We now had a semi-auto Vickers. The problem had to be in the top cover. It was a good thing we had plenty of spare parts on hand. After the fourth top cover swap, we found one that worked. And work it did, sort of. After five-six shots we would get a short recoil. That problem was easy to rectify. We swapped out the British booster assembly for the US one. The US booster assembly places the muzzle face closer to the barrel cup than does the British booster assembly. The extra boost generated is needed with 30-06.
After blasting 1200+ rounds full auto it was time to end the day. We tore down the top cover that worked and compared all components to the ones from the original non-working top cover. The trigger bar from the working top cover was slightly different than my original trigger bar. We found that the slot on the working trigger bar was 40 thousandth’s of an inch shorter compared to the slot on the non-working trigger bar. That means it engaged the lock trigger arm sooner and had a slightly longer pull. I’m sending off two trigger bars to a local welder to have their slots welded to the correct dimensions.
I think I am through with Vickers caliber conversions for now. But I did pick up a 7.62 x 54R extractor and a chamber reamer a while back, and I do have a couple spare .303 Aussie barrels and feed blocks. You never know……
I acquired a South African 7.62 NATO conversion consisting of a complete lock, feed block, barrel, some links, and a belt puller. Thanks to Peter Wells I acquired additional SA links to keep me happy for a while. With the SA 7.62 NATO conversion installed, my Vickers again runs 100% of the time using Malaysian, South African, Australian, Radway Green, and Winchester white box 7.62 NATO ammo. But ammo prices are rising so I decided to get my Vickers to run in 30-06 Springfield because CMP is selling 30-06 at about half the cost of either 8mm or 7.62 NATO.
The first challenge was to find the required components, barrel and feed block. Since the 8mm Mauser round and 30-06 Springfield round share the same head size, my 8mm Turkish extractor will work in this conversion. I was able to locate two barrels and a feed block on eBay, believe it or not. The feed block was complete except the upper feed arm was buggered up. I replaced it with the upper feed arm from the original 11mm lock that came with my Aircraft Vickers. I can also use the barrel muzzle cup from the US Aircraft Vickers barrel with the US 30-06 barrels. But, both 30-06 barrels needed work. One was de-milled by brazing a bolt into the chamber. A trip to a local machinist remedied that. The other barrel was bent like an “S” at about six inches from the muzzle. It was also rusted shut at the muzzle. I found another machinist who was willing to tackle that repair. He did a fantastic job using a 50 ton hydraulic press, oak blocks, and a drill blank in the diameter of the barrel bore. He then counter bored the muzzle for about an inch to clean up the rusted area. I spent a weekend with a tap handle and a 30-06 chamber reamer slowly cleaning out both barrel chambers by hand. With all the new 30-06 parts installed in my Vickers, the action would not lock up. Dolf and I found that the extractor lifting arms on my lock were striking the face of the feed block. Since my lock originated with the original 11mm Aircraft Vickers, it’s lifting arms were thicker than those on .303 or 30-06 Vickers. But remember, it worked fine with the 8mm setup and the 7.62 SA setup. I swapped the 11mm lifting arms for those from a spare British .303 lock. That did the trick. After loading 1000 rounds of “US Lake City 1966” 30-06 ammo into Aussie belts we found the loaded belts jammed inside the 30-06 feed block. Only then did Dolf say “Didn’t you know WWI US cloth belts were thinner than British ones.” How in the hell would I know that? I don’t remember seeing it mentioned in your book. This is a nice time to find out!
Looking around, I found some aluminum Turkish Maxim belts. They have the correct pitch, they are thin, and they are easy to load by hand. I unloaded the Aussie belts, by hand, and loaded the Turkish belts. We were now ready to try everything out, so off to the range we go. We setup everything, filled the barrel jacket with water, loaded a belt, and got ready for some serious blasting. I sat down behind the Vickers, got my posterior comfortable, placed my hands correctly on the grip handles, lifted the safety, and pushed down on the butterflies. Nothing happened! Nothing! Not a d**n thing! After all the crap we went through, now what could be wrong? We pushed, prodded, poked, b*tched, and still nothing. It was now time to get serious. We rechecked the head space. It was OK. We checked the ammo. It looked perfect. We fired some in a Garand. It worked fine. We fired some in a 1919A4. That worked fine. What could the problem be? In disgust I slammed the top cover shut. The Vickers fired one shot!? I opened the top cover again and slammed it down. Another shot was fired. I did that about ten times and each time a shot was fired. We now had a semi-auto Vickers. The problem had to be in the top cover. It was a good thing we had plenty of spare parts on hand. After the fourth top cover swap, we found one that worked. And work it did, sort of. After five-six shots we would get a short recoil. That problem was easy to rectify. We swapped out the British booster assembly for the US one. The US booster assembly places the muzzle face closer to the barrel cup than does the British booster assembly. The extra boost generated is needed with 30-06.
After blasting 1200+ rounds full auto it was time to end the day. We tore down the top cover that worked and compared all components to the ones from the original non-working top cover. The trigger bar from the working top cover was slightly different than my original trigger bar. We found that the slot on the working trigger bar was 40 thousandth’s of an inch shorter compared to the slot on the non-working trigger bar. That means it engaged the lock trigger arm sooner and had a slightly longer pull. I’m sending off two trigger bars to a local welder to have their slots welded to the correct dimensions.
I think I am through with Vickers caliber conversions for now. But I did pick up a 7.62 x 54R extractor and a chamber reamer a while back, and I do have a couple spare .303 Aussie barrels and feed blocks. You never know……
It has lots of good info. I am pleased that I still have a good quantity of clean .303 in my 'tactical reserve'! Many years ago I bought the bulk of the NZ Army .303 reserves, and kept a good wee pile for myself! ;D When I advertised it for sale I literally had people coming in with car trailers to buy it. I have since done similar deals with 7.62x51 (accurate Aussie made F4 which goes very well in SLR's) and also linked 4:1 .30/06. All sold, except for my personal stash!