New acquisitions...and a surprising outcome.

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Aqualung

Blackhawk
Joined
Mar 17, 2005
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823
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Philadelphia, PA, USA
A long-time buddy of mine is going through some relationship issues and the woman with whom he's living has asked him to leave and "downgrade" the relationship to "just friends" status. That means that my buddy needed to "thin the herd" of his extensive gun collection to get himself some additional fundage.

Anyhow, he put a list together of about 25 guns that he was selling and I told him that I'd buy a few of them from him. This past Saturday, I went up to meet up with him and buy the guns from him and to hang out with him for a bit. I'd committed to buy three guns from him, two handguns and a rifle.

"THE RIGHT ARM OF THE FREE WORLD!"
Now that that's out of the way…the rifle is a Century Arms R1A1 Sporter, which is basically a mixmaster FN-FAL. He'd picked it up, swapped out the furniture for real L1A1 stuff and never shot it. I always liked the FALs, so told him that if he ever sold it, that I'd take it off his hands. This way, he still has access to it if we ever get to shoot it or if he ever wants it back. He sold it to me with 12 magazines (9 metric, 2 inch and a metric 30-round mag).
Century R1A1Sp_R1.JPG


The first handgun is a Ruger P89. It's been around a bit, but doesn't look bad at all…of course, being a P89, it'd shrug off anything less than a nuclear explosion. This was to be my project gun to mount a reflex sight using a mount I'd seen that slides into the rear sight dovetail. I got it with 10 mags, 8 15-rounders, a 10-rounder and a Mec-Gar 17-rounder.
Ruger_P89_L1.JPG


The second handgun is a Taurus P92AF. I'm a kid of the 80s and 90s, when Beretta 92s were the rage. He wasn't selling his Beretta, but was selling the Taurus and a Girsan. I do like the frame-mounted safety on the Taurus better and this one has the three-position safety as well. This one's a little dinged up, but still not in bad shape at all. It's alloy and stainless and he swapped out a couple blued parts to give it some "highlights". This one came with 9 mags.
Taurus_PT92AF_L1.JPG


On his list, he also had a SR9C. I was curious to get a feel for it since so many Ruger fans love the SR series. For some reason, they never appealed to me, but I'd never really handled any before, either. So, I took a look at it, checked it out and said that even though I really didn't have a use for it (my Max-9 pretty much fills that niche), I would take it. So, we packed it into the bag in which I was putting all the purchases and the 5-6 mags for it into the bag with the pile of mags.

Then, he started breaking out the other guns he had for sale, since I hadn't seen a few of them.

He then placed another case on the table. "There's the Glock", to which I replied, "Ewww". Nevertheless, I pulled it out of the case, just for a look...which is when my impure thoughts started…

I'm not sure why, but this one seemed to fit right into my hand…unlike many of the others that I'd handled over the years. Something about the Gen4 with the different backstraps, whatever. Then, there was the longer barrel…the cut-out slide and the cutout for MOS. I sighted it at the wall and eased the trigger back…and surprisingly said, "I don't hate it."

It's a Gen4 G34 which is a competition/sport model of the G17 with a longer barrel (but shorter than the G17L). After some research, I found that it's originally only offered to law enforcement. My buddy got it from his local shop in "Second-hand, unused" condition…which means that it was bought and never shot. My buddy maybe only put 200 rounds through it. It is, for all intents and purposes, brand-new.

Well, in an unexpected turn of events for this Ruger fanboy, I surprised myself and passed up the SR9C and bought the Glock (along with 5 17-round mags and a 32-round "fun-stick"). I've decided to make the G34 the gun to receive the reflex sight and not the P89 since it's got the MOS cut and adapter plates included.
Glock_G34_L1.JPG


Four guns in one day is a personal record for me.

Hopefully, some range reports will be following.

Aqualung
 
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Joined
Mar 5, 2015
Messages
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the Great State of Wide-open (WY)
Some of the Century FALs were built on FN-licensed IMBEL upper receivers, which are generally very well respected. Others were assembled on uppers produced elsewhere, and can be more unpredictable in terms of reliability; the requirement for "922 compliance parts" also resulted in non-mil-spec parts being added to many FALs, with potential wear and other issues. Years ago, I had one with an IMBEL upper that was labeled "L1A1 SPORTER", but used metric mags, and was assembled using an Israeli FALO parts kit - an absolute FrankenFAL, but it was 100% reliable!

Hopefully yours will run right "from the get-go"! FALs can be more reliable than AKs - IIRC, one guy over at The FAL Files forum put over 16,000 rounds through his FAL without cleaning, and it was still running (one advantage of an adjustable gas system)!

"THE RIGHT ARM OF THE FREE WORLD!"
:)
 
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Aqualung

Blackhawk
Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
823
Location
Philadelphia, PA, USA
I'm not sure on the "parentage" of the SLR, yet. I haven't really taken it apart too much. My buddy says that it's an Australian lower, and that seems to be right, as it has the arrowhead and "flower" markings on the left side, but I haven't dug too much into markings and the like. Been a little too busy to nerd out and check out all the markings and stuff.

Edit Update: Found a Lithgow S/N lookup site and the lower's receiver S/N came back as being a Lithgow L1A1 receiver supplied to the Australian Army.

Aqualung
 
Joined
Mar 5, 2015
Messages
1,891
Location
the Great State of Wide-open (WY)
I'm not sure on the "parentage" of the SLR, yet. I haven't really taken it apart too much. My buddy says that it's an Australian lower, and that seems to be right, as it has the arrowhead and "flower" markings on the left side, but I haven't dug too much into markings and the like. Been a little too busy to nerd out and check out all the markings and stuff.

Edit Update: Found a Lithgow S/N lookup site and the lower's receiver S/N came back as being a Lithgow L1A1 receiver supplied to the Australian Army.

Aqualung

Sounds like you have an L1A1 parts kit - I really liked the L1A1 'paddle' selectors, and (IIRC) most of the L1A1 bolt carriers had 'sand cuts' to maximize reliability. The upper receiver is the 'official ATF' serial numbered part on the FALs, and because it contains the mag well, also determines what type of mag is best to use (guessing metric, based on what came with the rifle, but I think metric mags can also be used in inch-pattern receivers). At one point, I owned several FALs, but a few years ago, I let a friend talk me out of my last (& best) one - one of life's big regrets!
:)
 
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