maadi AK

Middle of the road rifles.

I had a Pars import, factory built, 16" RML. Great stick. Loved the pencil bbl.

(Un)Fortunately, during the recent panic, I was offered a stupid amount of money for it (think x3 of what I had in it) and it was sold.

I stay away from Century anything personally, but I am a fan of Maadi AKMs.

I have owned this PARS International Maadi Sporter for some 20 years now.
Visually, it is about as close as you can get to a Russian AKM without a major custom build.
Mine has had the internals, gas piston, grip, and upper handguard replaced with US made stuff and the magazines have US made followers and baseplates to conform.
The muzzles of the PARS guns are turned down to a point you cannot install a muzzle break or flash suppressor, no biggy to me.
As for reliability, it is all AKM, gun has never jammed or hung up and feeds whatever crap I stuff in the magazines
The Century assembled guns actually use a lot of Chinese made components and are not really Egyptian guns, just assemble abominations.
One disappointing but expected thing about the Egyptian guns, they are bullet hoses, mine is 6 moa on a good calm day, 9-10moa on a bad day.
The Century guns with the Chinese made barrels may do better if they were assembled correctly,,,,,

as far as I know century maadis(minus the ones built off mak 90 parts kits or MISRs) were imported and not built by them.

My buddy bought one in the height of the panic for $650(yea how he found that at a gun show of all places is beyond me) and a few parts like bolt carrier seem really crude but everything fits together and functions perfectly. Century maadis are far from the prettiest but I would certainly take one of them over anything century had to build or modify.

As far as the crutch folder goes, your better off buying that seperatly and just putting it on an older century/pars/(cant remember the other company that imported them)

What is the difference between these and the early 1980's (even pre Chinese) Steyr marked guns?

Only nicer AK I ever saw was an MPiK.

-kBob