PUMA PPS50 & Black Dog Mags

[ML Roak 0]

I bought a POS Puma PPS50 last year from a local dealer, it came with the factory 50 round drum. After attempting to shoot this gun I had considered trying to pawn it off at the Tulsa gunshow, but my conscious got the better of me and I couldn't do it.

 

As set-up from the factory this gun wouldn't fire 2 rounds in succession without a failure, it was a $575 paper-weight that had sat in my gun-safe ever since. After a friend of mine bought one of the BDM 10-22 drums, we tried it at my range, and to my astonishment, it worked really well, even through my old, very well-used 10-22, I got to looking at the BDM website for the 10-22 mags (I already had a few BDM AR15 conversion mags that I was happy with) and spotted the drum and stick mag for my POS PPS50. So I immediately ordered a drum and a 30 round stick for the POS PUMA (can you tell I was NOT happy with this gun?), and an AK22 mag (another gun with a spotted history).

 

When the mags arrived I was hopeful, but given the history with this gun I was pretty apprehensive. I unpacked the mags, loaded them both and went out to test fire. both mags had some failures to feed, and the gun had some light hits, (which it had before the new mags, it also had an uncanny, unsettling ability to fire out of battery with the factory mag, sending shards of brass and excess gas out of the ejection port), but I figured that the BDM mags may need some break-in time, so I loaded and fired several more times with both mags.

After a couple hundred rounds the BDM mags, both the drum and the stick, have all but eliminated the feeding issues that the Puma PPS50 had, which set me to work on the light strike problem. I ended-up stretching one of the recoil springs to give it a bit more oomph, as the bolt was not always getting completely into battery, the round was in place in the chamber but the bolt was just short of the extractor going over the rim. This didn't seem to be a problem as much with the drum as with the stick mag, the stick mag must put a little more pressure on the bottom of the bolt as it moves forward. After tweaking the recoil spring, and a good oiling I took it out today for a test run. EUREKA!!!! The PUMA fired 50 rounds in succession without a failure, I am positive that this would not have been able to happen with the factory mag, no matter how much I messed with it.

 

One a side note, The AK22 mag also worked VERY well, that gun was never a good feeder to begin with, and the original mag was nothing short of complete crap. The BDM mag works very well in this gun, it works as well or better than the mag I modded out of a Marlin 10 rounder for it. This particular AK22 REALLY likes CCI Blazer 22LRs above all else (it didn't really even care for CCI Mini-mags, which about universally work in everything).

 

I hope this helps out someone else who may be saddled with a POS Puma that wont work, I know my local dealer sold at least a dozen of them, before they found out that none of them functioned from the box, and that PUMA want's the customer to foot the bill to send them an obviously defective, non/never functioning firearm. For what it would have cost me to send the gun back, I paid for the BDM 30 round stick mag.

 

So to PUMA, thumbs down for being little to no help (without me paying more than I already had, they told me on the phone that they had LOTS of problems with these guns, and still thought I should pay them to fix it) and to the Black Dog Machine staff, they get a HUGE Thumbs-up from me for making this POS run, I am a very satisfied customer.

 

JMHO.

ML Roak

[sharkbit 109]

shit, glad I didn't buy one of those Pumas....instead I bought a POS semi-auto American 180, that constantly FTF's.

 

At least the problems I had with my GSG-5 were taken care of thru ATI's great customer service, and it was FREE even though the gun was out of warranty.