The disconnector sits beneath the bolt when it’s in battery position, right? The disconnector is putting a small bit of tension on the bolt to move it up and back, basically moving it out of battery.
The disconnector in no way/shape/form is there to 'lift' the bolt out of battery. The action is specifically designed for the bolt to ONLY come out of battery if the bolt carrier is driven to the rear via the gas system. There is a reason for those hooks on the bottom of the carrier. You need to be inspecting these things with the barreled action COMPLETELY disassembled, which means.... no trigger group installed and subsequently no disconnector as a variable.
However, there is no free front-to-back movement available once in position. There’s none whatsoever…and so it’s possible that it’s not even dropping down or forward as far as it should. Am I understanding this?
It seems (again, a novice speaking) like the disconnector is ‘probably’ fine without knowing more. But the spacing, not so much.
Basically.
I own a few other SKS rifles and looked at what those bolts do. There are varying degrees of movement in them, unlike this troubled rifle. There’s no space to give in the rifle so there’s none to be taken up when the round is chambered…and that means it won’t go bang.
So besides looking up the seller’s ad/listing and maybe the seller…can see if a different bolt will work in the gun or is that asking for even more problems? I mean if the ‘temporary replacement’ bolt has a small amount of play, can I take it to the range and see if it will fire as intended?
The problem here is.... I would never recommend swapping bolts and risking bad things to happen to your face. Bolts are headspaced to a specific gun. If you grab a bolt from another carbine that creates
excessive headspace in the 'problem' carbine... Get a good life insurance policy for your family.
The rifle is easily fixable, you simply need to verify/correct the headspace issue. You need to......
#1 Buy a set of 'go'/'no-go' headspace gauges, or atleast the 'go' gauge.
#2 Remove the projectile and powder from a round without damaging the casing in any way, and we can use that as a 'go' gauge.
Once we have a gauge to work with and see exactly where things are...... we can adjust the bolt accordingly.