Century FAL

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HOLY DIVER

HOLY DIVER

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i don't know anything about an FAL rifle.good rifle?not so good? the serial #ca017xx it looks great if it is a good rifle whats a fair price?
 
The FN-FAL is ONE HECK of a tested, trusted, powerful battle rifle. One of my favorites. The "Century" is tougher to say. I've seen pretty good ones & I've seen some I was not-so impressed with. Fair price? I'd want to see & shoot it before making that call.
 
I owned a Century FAL. You will note that is past tense. While the FAL is a great weapon the Century builds can be hit or miss at best. If it was imported by them but built by someone else it may be great. If they built it I'd look for something else.
 
FAL is a good platform. Century is generally a company to avoid. Some of the FALs they assembled back in the 1990's through maybe 2003 or so were pretty decent: built on IMBEL forged receivers and with fairly good parts kits. If you know what to look for, you can find a good one. However, I would avoid their more recent FALs built on US cast receivers, because of both the receiver design and the generally declining quality of parts.
 
I am pretty sure they are all assembled by CAI. I don't think they can import complete rifles. I have one from 1994 and it is great as it is an Imbel, but I have heard stories about others. If you can shoot it first, great. If not, and you get a lemon, it can probably be fixed. That being said, it is up to you to decide if you want to go the hard route. They are great rifles when running right.

Good luck,
LNK
 
If it's marked Century it was assembled by Century, but there are only two moderately difficult tasks in assembling an FAL (tightening the barrel and headspacing it) and the rest of it goes together as easy as an AR. The quality of the underlying parts, both receiver and the parts kit, really matters more unless the assembler is terrible. This is why CAI's IMBEL-receivers, along with the better (less used) parts kits that were available 10-20 years ago, tend to make better FAL rifles.
 
Are you considering buying a FAL? The only way that I would buy a used one would be if I was allowed to test fire it before purchase. I would want to fire several hundred flawless rounds thru it before I would consider it.
 
If your going to get an FAL you should go witha higher quality build. It's not like an AR which can be put together for cheap and perform on par with its more expensive counter-parts. DSA's can be had for around $1000 but if it were me i would just save money rather than settling for the century
 
I would want to fire several hundred flawless rounds thru it before I would consider it.
Click to expand...

No one but a close friend is going to let you fire "several hundred flawless rounds" through a gun before purchasing. Nor is it necessary. If you know FALs it isn't hard to determine whether a given one is properly assembled and very likely to work properly. You do need to inspect it in person.

Here's the short, short version: for about $1000-1100 you can buy a DSA assembled "IMBEL rifle" which is one of DSA's lower cost FALs, using used IMBEL parts on a new DSA receiver with new DSA furniture and FCG, and a warranty. It's one of the nicest parts-kit FALs you will find. Alternatively, you can buy a new Century for $700ish and hope it works, or if you know what you're doing and willing to take a small risk, possibly buy a used older Century for maybe $600-800, which will probably be better than the new Century but has no warranty or pedigree. It depends on your personal level of knowledge, hassle tolerance, and willing to spend 30-50% more for something that is slightly nicer and guaranteed to work.
 
Probably 15 years ago I bought a Century built "L1A1" thumbhole stocked rifle.
It was pretty horrible as it came from the box, bad accuracy, poor function, etc.
I sent the rifle to DSA Inc. and had them rebarrel it with a like new L1A1 barrel I had acquired, they also replaced all the internals which allowed the gun to meet the U.S. ban compliance.
When the ban ended, I installed a U.S. made copy of the L1A1 flash hider.

The gun performed very well after being rebuilt but i ended up having more than double in it than what I started with.

What Z-Michigan said is absolutely true.
Save your pennies and buy a DSA built rifle from the get go.
You can thank us later.:)
 
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