Nightcrawler
Member
Never fails. They've always got to act up when you've got company over, hey?
I took a friend shooting today, let him try my .45s, my revolver, my FAL, and my shotgun. The FAL gave me problems early on.
First of all, from my experience: Stay away from the alloy magazines. That's two now that have given me problems that I don't have with the steel ones.
Secondly, I once again had the failure to extract. Cranking the gas system down to 3 aleviated this. Normally the weapon ran fine on 5.5. After I adjusted it to 3, I rapid-fired several magazines in a function-check; no problems.
The cause of the problems?
South African ammo, my guess. DSA told me that it can be problematic, and in my experience it is. I had to adjust the gas system to get it to cycle the first time, and I've had to adjust it again, meaning that even different lots of the ammo are inconsistent. I'm almost tempted to turn the gas all the way down and let the thing run like an AK; overpowered gas system. (See, the FAL's adjustable gas system allows you only to use the minimum amount of gas necessary to cycle the action reliably; if you get underpowered ammunition, as I'm guessing the SA is, you're not getting enough pressure at that gas setting and need to adjust it. Remember, the FAL's gas system can't accomodate underpowered ammunition. If it doesn't work on 1 or 2 it's just not going to cycle in a FAL.)
I didn't have a single problem in probably 1,500+ rounds of Portugese surplus, but I've had plenty of grief from the South African stuff (comes in the 140 round battle packs). I've heard that the SA stuff isn't actually surplus, and DSA says it's not the best (maybe that's why it's so cheap).
In any case, it's just my luck that I'd buy 1,400 rounds of spotty ammo. I'm going to burn as much of it off and will stick to better stuff in future (Portugese is good, Australian has gotten a lot of praise. Stay away from Indian stuff and Cavim, I'm told).
Anyway, after I got those hiccups ironed out, he loved firing the FAL off of the bipod. The recoil isn't bad and he was enjoying himself.
I took a friend shooting today, let him try my .45s, my revolver, my FAL, and my shotgun. The FAL gave me problems early on.
First of all, from my experience: Stay away from the alloy magazines. That's two now that have given me problems that I don't have with the steel ones.
Secondly, I once again had the failure to extract. Cranking the gas system down to 3 aleviated this. Normally the weapon ran fine on 5.5. After I adjusted it to 3, I rapid-fired several magazines in a function-check; no problems.
The cause of the problems?
South African ammo, my guess. DSA told me that it can be problematic, and in my experience it is. I had to adjust the gas system to get it to cycle the first time, and I've had to adjust it again, meaning that even different lots of the ammo are inconsistent. I'm almost tempted to turn the gas all the way down and let the thing run like an AK; overpowered gas system. (See, the FAL's adjustable gas system allows you only to use the minimum amount of gas necessary to cycle the action reliably; if you get underpowered ammunition, as I'm guessing the SA is, you're not getting enough pressure at that gas setting and need to adjust it. Remember, the FAL's gas system can't accomodate underpowered ammunition. If it doesn't work on 1 or 2 it's just not going to cycle in a FAL.)
I didn't have a single problem in probably 1,500+ rounds of Portugese surplus, but I've had plenty of grief from the South African stuff (comes in the 140 round battle packs). I've heard that the SA stuff isn't actually surplus, and DSA says it's not the best (maybe that's why it's so cheap).
In any case, it's just my luck that I'd buy 1,400 rounds of spotty ammo. I'm going to burn as much of it off and will stick to better stuff in future (Portugese is good, Australian has gotten a lot of praise. Stay away from Indian stuff and Cavim, I'm told).
Anyway, after I got those hiccups ironed out, he loved firing the FAL off of the bipod. The recoil isn't bad and he was enjoying himself.
