Mini-14 5819 cannot switch on safety with bolt closed?

[Foothills223]

I fairly-recently purchased a new Mini-14 5819, and noticed (what is to me) a kind of odd behavior with the safety: if the bolt is open then I can switch the safety on and off at will, however with the bolt closed the safety can be switched off but is prevented from being switched back on (until the bolt is opened again).

I had heard from somewhere that this was by design, however looking again at the manual it just appears strange that one cannot activate the safety without opening the bolt.

Is this the "nature of the beast", or is something amiss? This is my first Mini, so I don't have much to compare it with.

Thanks.

 

[dfletcher]

Isn't it more a matter of the safety can't be engaged unless the hammer is cocked? If the safety can't be activated with the hammer cocked and the bolt closed that's not a properly functioning safety. Unless I'm misunderstanding something -

 

[gunman42782]

Make sure the trigger assembly is properly seated, and if it still does it send it back to the factory.

 

[blume357]

If you have not disassembled the rifle then I would as mentioned above, make sure the trigger group is seated right... other than that... it needs to go back to the factory for sure.

 

[Captain America]

The safety on my Mini worked really hard when it was new, I mean really hard. A drop of lube and some use and it got much better. Just remember, the safety should move with very little resistance with the bolt open, with the bolt closed and the hammer cocked it will have quite a bit of resistance, if you've pulled the trigger and the bolt is closed the safety will not move until you cock the hammer again.

 

[DGW1949]

The safety on my Mini worked really hard when it was new, I mean really hard. A drop of lube and some use and it got much better. Just remember, the safety should move with very little resistance with the bolt open, with the bolt closed and the hammer cocked it will have quite a bit of resistance, if you've pulled the trigger and the bolt is closed the safety will not move until you cock the hammer again.

Exactly right.

DGW

 

[COSteve]

Deleted

 

[Foothills223]

The safety on my Mini worked really hard when it was new, I mean really hard.

This appears to have hit it on the head: with the bolt closed and the hammer cocked, the safety does engage, but with quite a bit more effort than I was expecting. Previous disassembly didn't show anything that appeared to be amiss, so I was almost going to assume that this was some sort of "uber tactical / anti-grab" feature unique to the 5819 model or something.

I'll cycle it a bit, as well as strategically add a bit more lube, and hopefully it will improve.

Thanks again for all of the input.