There are three FAL kits readily available right now (Jan
2003)
The best condition kit available is the
STG58. Currently both Federal Arms
www.gunsnstuff.net
and DSA www.dsarms.com
are selling them for around $250 per kit. The supply
of these kits was thought to be completely dried up back
in 2000, however a good quantity of them became available
again in late 2002. Standard condition of the STG is
excellent and the quality of the parts is second to none.
Two other cheaper FAL kits are:
The
G1 it was a German built rifle. The best source for them is www.dsarms.com
They sell them for $135 plus $10 shipping. They include new STG hand guards,
a new pistol grip, new carry handle, and a new cocking handle piece.
Other vendors sell the kits for around $100 with no new pieces www.gunsnstuff.net
www.tapco.com.
The G1 kits are fair to
good condition. It is said the German Army sold
their G1 rifles to Turkey. It is obvious that
whatever Army had them used them quite a bit. Minor
pitting can be seen on a lot of them almost all of them
have a leaky gas tube that has to be replaced or soldered
to the gas block.. They have a bipod which is kind
of cool. That configuration makes them a little on
the heavy side. I like to cut the barrel down to 17
inches. Standard barrel length is 21 inches.
Most G1 kits have a wood butt stock some can be refinished
and others are too far gone. Barrel condition of
these kits is usually good to fair. Expect to
replace the barrel and furniture with new parts.
The best quality receiver
available is the Imbel. They are readily available
right now for less than $200 from Federal Arms Corp
www.gunsnstuff.net.
The Imbel is a Type 3 receiver which means it doesn't
have the nice looking lightening cuts on the sides.
However it will still work just fine with any of the
three kits listed above. The Imbel kit listed
above would have had a Type 3 receiver on it originally.
Federal Arms is now selling
their US made receiver which is a Type 1 and has the
nice lightening cuts. It sells in the $200 range
as well. Quality on these receivers seems to be
quite good. The STG58 rifles originally used Type
1 receivers.
Entreprise
receivers www.entreprise.com . There quality is up, they count as a US part, and they are
priced at $179.00.
You will have to buy 6 US parts and you will
probably also want a muzzle brake. I recommend that for US parts you
start with an FSE hammer trigger and sear they are availble from www.rpbusa.com
and www.gunsnstuff.net
for $49.00, FSE pistol grips are good at $15.00, and gas pistons are
available for $30.00.
Everybody out there makes a muzzle brake of
some sort and everyone has a different opinion of what looks best. I
personally like to have a muzzle attachment that does something (such as a muzzle brake
instead of a sleeved flash hider). I also like one that follows the same
lines as the original (such as Tapco's Stoll look alike for the STG-58), but I
also like the DSA 3 port and Entreprise Zero Climb that look nothing like an
original flash hider.
