I thought about a couple other questions after I posted my last response,,,,Are the made in USA parts better/the same?
And I've read that adding a USA made flash supressor and the gas piston could get me in compliance.
My barrel isn't threaded and I would like to keep my guns in compliance without ripping it apart and making it less reliable,,,,,And what determines when you have to bring your gun into compliance
If you haven't altered the Romanian, I would just leave it alone ... the 10 round mag is a compliance issue too ... you could take a dremmel and open the mag well up to take a standard mag but then you would need to bring it back into parts count compliance too ... plus, if you do this the mags are very wobbly (side to side) because the receiver doesn't have the dimples in the receiver to hold them straight.
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Back to your MAK-90
As to quality of US made parts, I've never heard of anyone having trouble with the Tapco or Red Star parts ... I have heard of people having trouble with trigger slap and hammers that break with other brands.
The thing most people get confused about; its not how many US made parts you can add (such as a flash-hider) but how many foreign made parts you can replace to change the classification from an imported firearm to a domestic firearm ... yeah, this is stuff you can't make up ... it takes lawyers to come up with crap like this
Adding a flash-hider to a gun that doesn't have one doesn't change the imported parts count as you haven't removed any imported parts.
Here's a list of the parts for the AK that 922r considers to determine your weapons status ... if you have 10 or less foreign parts from this list then you have a domestic weapon if you have 11 or more you have an imported weapon.
1. Barrel
2. Receiver
3. Front and Rear Trunnions (Applies to stamped receivers only)
4. Bolt Carrier
5. Bolt
6. Gas Piston
7. Butt-stock
8. Pistol Grip
9. Upper and Lower Hand-guards (Both count as 1 part)
10. *Muzzle Device*
11. Hammer
12. Trigger
13. Disconnector
14. Magazine Body
15. Magazine Follower
16. Magazine Floorplate
Since you have a MAK-90 which does not have a threaded barrel/flash-hider you only have 15 from this list so you only need to replace 5 parts ... to get to the magic number of 10.
In the early days of the ban a lot of people replaced the Stock, handguard pistol-grip, Magazine Follower and Floorplate (the early ones came in with no threads like your MAK) ... but to stay in compliance you would have to change every Magazine Follower and Floorplate in every mag you have ... now days with more US parts available most shooters choose parts that are part of the gun so you can use any mag and not worry about it.
For any AK the easiest and most common parts to replace are the Trigger, Hammer & Sear ... the Tapco G3 set is one of the best. The Pistol grip is another easy & cheap part to replace ... now you only need to replace 1 more part. The cheap and easy parts are the hand-guard, stock or the gas piston.
I've built a few AK' and for compliance parts I use a US made receiver and I like to replace the Trigger, Hammer, Sear, gas piston and muzzle device as these parts don't alter the original look of the weapon ... but if you are going to replace the stocks anyway its just as easy (although generally more expensive) to replace with US stocks. The gas piston is a little tricky ... you have to punch out the rivet that holds it to the bolt carrier and drill a hole through the new piston to install the rivet in.
Here's a link that goes into more depth but feel free to post again if you have more questions ...
http://cheaperthandirt.com/blog/?p=472
Here's a picture of a few I've built ... the top 3 still need sand-blast and paint ... the bottom one is a AK pistol I built in 2008 in definance to the Obamanation of our country.
