orangeninja
Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2003
- Messages
- 3,117
So I purchased an Arsenal SLR107FR (Bulgarian, side folding, AK47) from Atlantic Arms just before year end last year and it arrived today for pickup. Yipeee...right? Not so fast. Upon unboxing this rifle it was obvious something was wrong, at first I thought it was a canted sight but no, after a brief inspection it was obvious the entire barrel was bent to the side and downward.
I know some of the early SLR107s had canted sights and Arsenal supposedly corrected the problem (bad batch). This one on the other hand looks like maybe they tried to "fix" it by placing the gun in a vice and twisted the entire dang barrel (pure speculation on my part of course).
I read on another forum that if your Arsenal contains a sample target, you're likely okay, if not, inspect it carefully (I don't know if this is true or not).
Anyhow, given this is a $1K+ stamped AK, I cannot believe Atlantic Arms allowed this weapon out the door (though in their defense it's possible they don't even bother inspecting before shipping) but Arsenal? Their reputation is the entire reason anyone would pay literally twice as much for one of their rifles versus a CAI.
I've not yet transferred the rifle from my dealer, so maybe Atlantic will exchange it, maybe not. Maybe Arsenal will give me a new rifle, maybe they'll attempt a repair.
I want a new rifle mostly because as I understand it, the optics rail mounted on the side of the AK is calibrated to the barrel. Swapping out the barrel would render the optic rail useless. They took a shortcut on quality inspection of the barrel, I have no faith that they'd do a proper repair of the entire rifle.
As of now I would consider this rifle unsafe to fire with the barrel pitched to the left and downward. Any thoughts?
I know some of the early SLR107s had canted sights and Arsenal supposedly corrected the problem (bad batch). This one on the other hand looks like maybe they tried to "fix" it by placing the gun in a vice and twisted the entire dang barrel (pure speculation on my part of course).
I read on another forum that if your Arsenal contains a sample target, you're likely okay, if not, inspect it carefully (I don't know if this is true or not).
Anyhow, given this is a $1K+ stamped AK, I cannot believe Atlantic Arms allowed this weapon out the door (though in their defense it's possible they don't even bother inspecting before shipping) but Arsenal? Their reputation is the entire reason anyone would pay literally twice as much for one of their rifles versus a CAI.
I've not yet transferred the rifle from my dealer, so maybe Atlantic will exchange it, maybe not. Maybe Arsenal will give me a new rifle, maybe they'll attempt a repair.
I want a new rifle mostly because as I understand it, the optics rail mounted on the side of the AK is calibrated to the barrel. Swapping out the barrel would render the optic rail useless. They took a shortcut on quality inspection of the barrel, I have no faith that they'd do a proper repair of the entire rifle.
As of now I would consider this rifle unsafe to fire with the barrel pitched to the left and downward. Any thoughts?