Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  1. #1
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    Default Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    I took my sister shooting on Friday with the intention of shooting my new Marlin 925 and sighting in my Ruger Mark III Hunter (I replaced the fiber optic sights with normal usable sights).

    I also decided to bring out my TTC which hasn't seen a lot of use since I bought it despite having quite a bit of ammo stocked up.

    Firstly, I'd like to talk about the ammo. I was shooting Romanian surplus and Bulgarian surplus. The Romanian stuff comes in these 72 round packs that manage to break open pretty easily spilling your ammo all over the bottom of your ammo storage container.

    The Bulgarian stuff comes in packs of 40 on 8 round stripper clips. However, the stripper clips don't do much other than hold 8 rounds (which conveniently is how many the TTC loads). I suspect the stripper clips were designed with another weapon in mind.

    The Romanian ammo is pretty consistent. It came in a sealed tin (which if you don't have the proper tool is a pain in the ass to open) so all of the ammo came out looking more or less new. I believe this ammo is from the 80's.

    The Bulgarian ammo came in packs, but no sealed container. The Bulgarian ammo also appears to have some sort of lacquer seal (black) around the primer. I believe this ammo to be from the 50's.

    I fired close to 200 rounds out of the TTC with it being split about 50/50 as to Romanian and Bulgarian ammo. The Romanian ammo nearly always went off on the first trigger pull. The Bulgarian ammo definitely had a lot of stiff primers however which OFTEN required 2 or more trigger pulls to go off. However, all of the ammo did fire. Still, it kind of wrecks your groove to have to cock the pistol every time it fails to fire.

    Despite firing, there were definitely small (fractions of a second) delays in when the trigger was pulled and when the Bulgarian ammo would go off and the power behind each shot was as different as shooting 38 special and .357 magnum from the same gun from round to round.

    Now onto the gun itself.

    The TTC is a pretty crude gun. The metal work is poor at best with lots of tooling marks. The sights are lousy (think Springfield Armory GI 1911) and the grip angle is awkward. The grip angle wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the loose bakelite grip on the right side of my gun. I think it is inherent in the design if the grip isn't made to perfectly fit the frame.

    The magazines look the same but they don't quite fit into the pistol the same. One will not go into the gun easily unless the slide is already locked back.

    The trigger is lousy in every aspect. The trigger pull is just awful. It is hands down the worst out of any guns I own (including my Mosin Nagant rifle), and the sharp corners of the trigger act like a serrated knife when you fire the gun.

    Racking the slide was near impossible when I first bought the gun unless the hammer was already cocked. I filed down a burr in the metal and now the slide is easily racked.

    The safety on the gun isn't much to talk about. It was added after the fact so that the gun could be imported. It doesn't always work and sometimes the trigger won't move backwards even with the safety disengaged. There is also no firing pin or hammer safety so if you drop this gun with a round chambered, it will most likely go off.

    Accuracy? I wouldn't call it a target gun. I've heard the term "military accuracy" used before. I believe they basically meant that if the gun can consistently hit a man sized target, it is good enough. This gun certainly fits that definition. But at 7 yards, I was having a hard time predicting where the shots were going to land. I'm not the best shooter, but I have MUCH tighter groupings with my 92FS or S&W 686 (shooting 158 grain .357 magnum) at 15 yards. In fact, I don't even think you could call shooting the tokarev "grouping". I think the ammo played into this a bit, along with the lousy...well everything.

    The barrel on mine is a little rough as well. You have to clean these things pretty quickly after shooting them due to the corrosive surplus ammo.

    All in all, I didn't have very much fun shooting this gun. The recoil and ergonomics of the pistol left my trigger finger cut up and blistered (after only 200 rounds). The one REALLY good thing about shooting the TTC though was that EVERY other gun I shot afterward felt REALLY REALLY good including my S&W Walther PPK/S (which managed to go 14 rounds without jamming!!).

    My final verdict, if you are going to spend 200+$ on a gun and ammo, this shouldn't be it. I know the 7.62x25 is an impressive round (assuming they are all loaded the same), but the platform itself sucks. Bear in mind, this is only my experience with the Romanian TTC. Every other Soviet bloc country had their own version and the CZ52 also shoots 7.62x25. However, the only experience I had with a CZ52 was a stuck roller (yeah, those crazy Czechs use a roller system for the slide!) so the gun was unable to be fired.

    -Zach

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    I also have a TTC. I have Romanian ammo, and not Bulgarian.

    My personal experience with my TTC has been the same issue you have with the slide. It's extremely difficult to rack the slide with the hammer down, so I just cock the hammer first. The sights are awful. Target acquisition is ... difficult. Black on black with the front blade being very thin, so there's a lot of "blank space". I painted the front sight white so I could see it better.

    The sights are fixed which is a problem because they appear to be off. I have an accuracy issue with mine, but it actually seems somewhat consistent. It shoots high and to the left. Distance was about 20 feet. I know the distance I've been shooting at is consistent because they have different gravel at different distances at the 25 yard range in Ontelaunee. However they don't have markers to say exactly what those distances mean. So I'd estimate 20 feet or so.

    I'm not a very good marksman yet though, so I couldn't really tell you how much potential it has. I don't hold out too much hope though looking at the rifling; the bore doesn't look very worn, it just looks like the rifling was never very strong to begin with.


    I don't find it painful to shoot at all though. Grip angle is a little odd, but not terribly uncomfortable if you have small hands like me.

    Overall I wouldn't recommend it either. Seeing people talk about the muzzle flare, the recoil, and "boom-factor" etc. made me think it might be a fun little gun. It isn't. It's not that it's painful or anything, it's that it's so inaccurate. I wonder if it had a better barrel on it if it would be more accurate or if there is something else inherently inaccurate with the design.
    Last edited by Nullifidian; February 1st, 2010 at 11:17 AM.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    I forgot to mention in the course of firing the gun, the trigger locked up and would not fire. I had to unload the gun, rack the slide a few times and work with the trigger to get it to do anything.

    I also forgot to mention what a pain this gun is to reassemble. Disassembly isn't so bad, but the recoil spring just doesn't want to go into the gun when you try and put it back together. In fact the recoil spring feels cheap and like it isn't strong enough for the recoil of the gun.

    Nullifidian - you should be able to drift the rear sight. It won't help with the vertical problem, but at least you will be able to shoot straight. And my hands are not small. Not huge, but not small. I find the gun to be awkward at best and downright painful at other times.

    I thought the same thing. here is a gun that can blow through light armor, has a loud bang (which I am told by friends at the range that it is LOUD) and lots of flash and sparks when it hits the backstop, but still, it isn't fun to shoot. I'd rather shoot any of my .22's or just pay a little more for ammo.

    I wish I could fit one of my Beretta 92FS's with 7.62x25. I think the improved platform would make the gun more fun to shoot, but I don't think the magazine well is large enough to accommodate the larger ammo.

    -Zach

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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    Quote Originally Posted by zachomega View Post
    I forgot to mention in the course of firing the gun, the trigger locked up and would not fire. I had to unload the gun, rack the slide a few times and work with the trigger to get it to do anything.
    Thankfully, mine eats all the ammo fed to it without any kind of hiccup whatsoever. No FTF, no stovepipe, no FTE, no problems. Every pull of the trigger results in a bang, a shell ejecting, and the next round chambering if there is one. Sounds like I'm lucky in that regard.

    -snip-
    Nullifidian - you should be able to drift the rear sight. It won't help with the vertical problem, but at least you will be able to shoot straight.
    The rear sight can be drifted? It looks fixed to me like the front sight.


    -snip-
    I wish I could fit one of my Beretta 92FS's with 7.62x25. I think the improved platform would make the gun more fun to shoot, but I don't think the magazine well is large enough to accommodate the larger ammo.

    -Zach
    Check your PMs

  5. #5
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    This thread proves the old thinking. If you want a TT, get a Russian or Polish one. Forget the rest.
    Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

  6. #6
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    This thread reminds me why I sold all my TT33s -- Uncomfortable grip, horrible trigger pull, lousy sights, accuracy good only for back of head executions from three feet or less . . . No sir, I do NOT miss those TT33s. Long gone and longer forgotten. I got my $$$ out of them and the ammo, but the TTs are in the "What was I thinking?" column.


    NOTE ON BULGARIAN 7.62x25 AMMO: Bulgarian 7.62x25 ammo with the dark primer sealant and "53" on the headstamp is well-known to be a source of kabooms. If the OP's Bulgy ammo was kinda "click-bang," I'd STRONGLY recommend that you dump it -- literally -- in the creek. There's still a suprising amount of this stuff that surfaces in gun shows. I saw some for sale in York in early May 09 at the SAR-East show, and again at the FOTDHAS show in Allentown in October.

    Noah

  7. #7
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    Unless I can find a way to somehow make it more accurate, after I burn through my spam can of tokarev ammo, I'll be retiring my TTC to "collection" status as part of a group of WWII era firearms. While the one I have is Romanian and from 1953, it is nearly identical to the TT-33s used by Russia during the war, and my budding collection is for me, not for anyone else.

    I may, some time down the road sell it, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

  8. #8
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    Quote Originally Posted by Nullifidian View Post
    Thankfully, mine eats all the ammo fed to it without any kind of hiccup whatsoever. No FTF, no stovepipe, no FTE, no problems. Every pull of the trigger results in a bang, a shell ejecting, and the next round chambering if there is one. Sounds like I'm lucky in that regard.
    I actually managed to get a stovepipe funny enough. Only once and I wouldn't be surprised if it was my grip on the pistol.

    The rear sight can be drifted? It looks fixed to me like the front sight.
    You should be able to drift it. If you look at the top of the slide, you will see (or should see) a line on the top and a line on the front of the sight which supposedly should line up for the optimum accuracy.

    Check your PMs
    Will do.

    -Zach

  9. #9
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    Quote Originally Posted by Noah_Zark View Post
    NOTE ON BULGARIAN 7.62x25 AMMO: Bulgarian 7.62x25 ammo with the dark primer sealant and "53" on the headstamp is well-known to be a source of kabooms. If the OP's Bulgy ammo was kinda "click-bang," I'd STRONGLY recommend that you dump it -- literally -- in the creek. There's still a suprising amount of this stuff that surfaces in gun shows. I saw some for sale in York in early May 09 at the SAR-East show, and again at the FOTDHAS show in Allentown in October.

    Noah
    That is good to know and makes me realize I was not crazy in their being different loads in that ammo. I wish I would have known all of this stuff when I first bought the pistol. That is actually sort of my motivation in posting this thread. Hopefully I can deter somebody from making the same mistake I made.

    -Zach

  10. #10
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    Default Re: Romanian TTC Tokarev range outing...

    Sorry to hear such negative reports. I love my Romanian Tok. It is accurate and runs flawlessly. It's my 10 yr old son's favorite handgun.

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