The Most Reliable .308 Semiauto Rifle

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Good to hear you like your 742, I haven't been able to get my new 7400 cycling very well at all yet (still must be packing grease in there somewhere, probally guming up the valves or such. I still need to figure out this gun.) Any tips on what to look for? I'm brand new to semi-autos.
 
Sounds to me like once you've got a good fal/m1a/m14/G3/HK93, you're pretty much at the plateau were if it doesn't go bang, it's the will of the gods.

In other words, we've identified the acceptable rifles, and now we're splitting hairs.


Oh, my vote: M1A. Thousands of rounds, never missed a beat that I can't blame directly on that crappy India milsurp.
 
I'll tell you from personal experiance that the 742/7400 series of rifles are good for hunting applications, but I personally would not want to go into a situation that my life depended on them.(issues with both the gas system and magazines)

As for your 7400 and malfunctioning, remove all your wood and buy some 78 cents a can carb choke cleaner from WalMart and give both the firecontrol and gas system a good doucheing. that may clear up any problems you have. re-apply CLp as a lubricant, stay away from WD-40 and the orange bottle of oil that comes in the hoppe's cleaning kit.
They'll both gum up the works like you wouldn't believe.
 
Well, never had a problem with my DSA SA58 (FAL) Medium Contour Tactical. Lighter than about any .308 semi and it's super reliable. My torture test consisted of 600 rounds over 3 sessions (200 rounds per weekend in less than a couple of hours) with absolutely NO cleaning of any kind. I use FP-10 for lube and Aussie (best) and Port (worst) surplus ammo. Only failures were a few failures to extract when playing with the gas reg (I have it dump my rounds only about 3 feet away). Accuracy is better than I can shoot (use an Aimpoint). REAL easy to clean and maintain- probably the best I've ever seen.
The point is that DSA makes the best FAL's. An original HK-91 or G3 is gonna be good too, but getting one is gonna cost 'ya (also not as easy to clean as a FAL but mags are priced the same). Springfield makes good M14's but Fulton Armory is better (M14 mags are really pricey and I can't stand investment casting for a receiver that was designed to be forged). Galli .223 guns are great but no experience with the .308. Wouldn't buy a Saiga or VEPR .308 as there are no 20rd mags easily available.
Ultimately my choice to buy the DSA FAL over any other .308 autoloader was because it has the best characteristics and quality for the price over anything else that I could find. And brand new mags for under $9 was nice too! :)
 
I don't have enough experience to answer this as authoritatively as others here, but let me just tell you I will update this thread if/when my M1A fails.

Hasn't yet.
 
If reliability is the prime requiste; the HK 91 gets my vote hands down!!!! Only time I had a rifle related malf in 10,000+rounds was when the port buffer I attached caused cases to hit scope and bounce back into chamber. My M-14 and FN-Fal,(or .308 Yugo AK)are real good,but not that good!!!!;)
 
J Man
Why DSA?
Don't you think you could save yourself money by either putting one together from an all matching STG58 kit or having anohter smith build it for you for less money?

My G1 shoots about 2 1/2 MOA and I built it myself.

I've also had 2 other builds by gunsmiths before building one myself, they all had acceptable accuracy at a fraction of the cost of DSA
 
Remington Employee- Thanks for the recomendations. Is there anything I could do to adress (even partially) the problem areas with the 7400?

Honestly, I wanted an AR-10 or AR-15, but the People's Republic of California insists we can't have much of anything these days :(
 
Artherd,
There shouldn't be any grease in your 7400 as from the factory.
We use a rust preventitive dip on all parts, not Cosmoline as in military guns.
You may want to pick up some of the older factory magazines without the plastic baseplate if you come by some. (The new ones are made in Italy and not as robust IMHO)

What problems are you having?

A good cleaning with the above method of cheap 78 cents, Walmart carb cleaner (NOT gummout since it has other ingredients) does wonders, followed by Remington CLP or break free CLP oil lightly applied to all metal surfaces usually suffices.

Tell me if you have any further problems, and I'll give you the name of who to send it to for service.
 
I got a new 7400 carbine a few months back and couldnt get it to work no matter what I did or what ammo I used. I think some of them are just duds.
 
What specific problems with your 7400?
Failure to feed?
Failure to eject?
Short cycling?
or something else?

I'll tell you right now taht many problems are magazine related, did you try another magazine or magazines?
 
Mine would FTE (eject) about 25% of the rounds, and FTC (fail to fully chamber) about 5%.


Like you said, I suspect it was somewhat mag related. I found the trigger actuation arm (Disconnector?) was bent a bit inwards, such that it would be partially wedged between the magazine and slide, instead of following the slide and being fully actuated.

(there are even marks on the magazine from this happening.)

I bent it back such that engaugment would happen when manually cycled.

There is nothing captive in the mechanism to hold the arm in place, so I see how this can easially cause a stopage to say the least!


I haven't made it back out to the range yet to see if my fix was effective, I will let you know of course if I succed :)

I have been using CLP Brake Free, good to know that works well.

Thanks!
-Ben.

PS: do you know if there is an aftermarket mag-release arm made? How about charging handle? They are both a bit small and rough on my wussie hands :)
 
Remington Employee
While I agree that building your own FAL is cheap and vary easy to do there are a lot of parts on the DSA Tactical Carbine that are a big improvement over a factory gun. First, all parts are new (some DSA build, some new Steyr). You also get a 16" Badger barrel, short gas system, superior upper receiver, and an alloy lower receiver. Total weight of gun with empty mag is only 8.25 lbs. My setup with the Falcon grip, 4-rail forend, Aimpoint sight, wide ring, and fully loaded mag (150 grainers) weighs in at less than 10.5 lbs! That's right at about some factory FAL's weights, bare and empty.
Yes they are pricey at $1400 but considering their quality (not to mention their warranty) they are a bargain. For a build-up figure about $300 for an excellent condition parts kit , $200 for an average upper receiver ($500 for a DSA), plus build time and you are already over one-third the way to a brand new DSA with much better parts.
Just my opinion...
 
Here's a picture of my 2 FN's

Top FAL is an original (less the US compliance parts) 1952 German G1 from Herstal Belgium on a Coonan reciever that I built last year. ($750.00 in it approx)

Lower is my Big Jim 2002 build on a grade1 Imbel. ($1200.00 new)

If I hadn't sold (pending sale actually) the Big Jim build, I woud've made it into a lwt carbine with Isreali wood.

If you know what you're doing with these guns , you can build yourself one for considerably less than DSA wants for them
 
My main problem was it would fail to fully chamber alot, and fail to eject quite a bit as well. I scrubbed the chamber with the crooked handled brush that came with the gun and bore cleaner, but that didnt help. I should have tried gun scrubber.

The last thing to happen was I got a failure to extract, the shell stayed in the chamber when the bolt came back. I had only shot WInchester and Remington ammo in it.

I tried three different factory magazines, and one 10shot Eagle, nothing helped.

I sold it for CHEAP when I found the Saiga 308. I have seen the light.
 
FALFALFALFALFALFAL

I carried the M-14 for a time in the Army and shot them on my divisions rifle team. I like them, and actually would have carried one over the M-16 any day. BUT.....M1A's are not M-14's. I have seen M-1A's lose exractors like you wouldn't believe and the non GI parts particularly bolts, are not well respected.


FALFALFAL
 
I want an FAL, being poor and having to use the tax return I will get an Ohio Rapid Fire FAl for $550, if the wife doesn't come up something else for me to spend it on.
As for CETME, mine was the biggest POS I ever had, and I will never buy anything made by Century again. If I could get one of the originals imported in the 60s, i'd be happy, or even the stainless steel reciever one, but the FAL is just fine.
Also love the M14 - we still had those in the Navy in 89. Love that old fencepost!:cool:
 
Alex,

Reading your original, thread-starting post, I noticed something. You lump all FAL-based rifles as "FAL types", but then split up CETME-based rifles to deduce "Original manufacture H&K" is most reliable. This is not at all parallel.

What did you learn about "Original FN FAL" reliability? Why is it that Heckler and Koch gets its own category, but Fabrique Nationale does not? It could seem that you deliberately had a prejudice when you began your test, and wanted to arrive at your conclusion.

Just an observation,

John
 
Well, I am happy to report 100 rounds through my 7400 today and not a single failure (ok, one, using olympic M2 FMJ that was a bit too long and binded in the magazine even when outside the gun, but I'm not counting that :)

Seems that a through rinseing of the gas system was the needed fix. (that and about half a can of CLP. So far I think this gun likes to be over-lubed.)

I will post additional results, but things are definately looking up!

I also shot 3 3-shot 1.5" groups today as well. (with the Oly M2 ball ammo.)

Best!
Ben.
 
SA58, and no I wasn't worried about saving any money. I just wanted the best. Period
 
Glad to hear your 7400 problems are possibly a thing of the past.

To the DSA crowd of FAL supproters, I agree DSA makes a fine rifle, I'm just saying that someone who knows what they're doing can make a reliable FN FAL or SLR clone with as much reliability.

You then have money left over for those extras that you so love from DSA, Mags, Ammo, or other "kit" as the Europeans call it.

When the opprotunity affords itself, I want to pick up another metric grade 1 kit, either a STG58 or Argentine or Imbel.

I want to build myself a carbime like the one attached:
 

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