PSA “Spiker” Type 56

Forgive the long post ladies and gents, but it will give you something to read as this week draws to an end and you sip on something tonight.

PSA has recently introduced a copy of the Norinco Type 56 dubbed the “Spiker.” I was lucky enough to snag one that they had in stock on their website the other day. I wanted to share some photos and initial impressions with the brain trust of my recent purchase.

Unfortunately the only original Norinco I have to compare it to is a Type 84S in 5.56. First you can see some glamor shots of the Spiker. It seems like a beautifully made and finished rifle. PSA clearly put some care in the design and production of this.

The Norinco is a blued finish whereas the PSA is a very nice satin black paint. The furniture on the Norinco is certainly machined out of wood blocks to shape and laquer finished. At first I thought the PSA had a faux wood plastic stock, but it’s a very nicely finished stock set. The bayonet groove was very precisely machined out and well done – no chunks of wood are missing or damaged. The bayonet is well produced and locks up tight. The checkering on the pistol grip is very light and shallow, probably applied by a laser or quickly pressed, but it looks like it was burned out.

The receiver wisely has the manufacturer, Soviet Arms, and serial number placed in front of the mag well while the left side of the receiver is marked MADE IN USA and 7.62x39. The selector is three position and is marked in Chinese characters. The bolt and carrier are chrome and the trigger group is very serviceable. It features a long take up but a relatively light pull to break.

It can’t all be sunshine and rainbows, though. There are a few items that I wrote PSA about to see if it’s “tough luck” or “send it in and we’ll make it right.” I’ll update when I hear back from them. The metal probably wasn’t totally cleaned of oil under the gas tube lever. I found the finish bubbling in a very distinct arc following the path of travel of the lever. I worked the lever once and the finished scraped off leaving bare metal. This is strictly cosmetic and it’s an AK, but it’s also a brand new rifle off the production line. There is a minor chip in the bottom of the pistol grip as well. Also, cosmetic… The rear sling swivel seems to have too much left and right travel. The Norinco only goes forward and back as you would expect a swivel of this style to do. They also opted to secure the swivel to the buttstock with torx head screws instead of flathead.

A few items that seem more major. The bayonet is able to return to it’s stowed position to the left and right of the machined groove. If locking this in place without using care I can see this widening the machined groove. This is mostly a cosmetic issue, but I could see this eventually causing stress on the hinge. Probably the largest issue is the magazine well. This mag wobble is reminiscent of the old Century import WASR series. Left and right wobble isn’t too bad, but shockingly to me there is a significant amount of front and rear travel, maybe 2-3mm without measuring precisely. I have not fired this rifle yet, but this does concern me. The receiver is dimpled, but it may be out of spec. My experience with my WASR’s tells me this rifle will function fine with mag wobble, but boy is it annoying with a brand new rifle with this price tag.

Some other minor grips. It shipped without a cleaning rod, this is the first PSA AK rifle I have received without one. It also shipped without a sling and came with a Magpul magazine. I put a Romanian sling on it and put the first surplus magazine I grabbed out of the pile into it. Overall, this seems to be a fairly faithful reproduction of the Chinese Type 56 and I am not upset with my purchase.

Well, hopefully everyone enjoyed taking a look at this on a Friday afternoon. Have a great weekend!

 

Last couple of photos.

 

My first AK was a SAR-1 that I paid the princely sum of $270 for. It carries quite a few battle scars on it.

Hopefully I can shoot this next weekend. The kids often make it tough to get out the back door and shoot.

 

Based on the other PSA AK variants I have, I expect this to shoot like a house a fire, but we shall see.

 

The Magpul magazine fits a little tighter, but it is still unacceptable wobble in my opinion. I've got a WASR-2 that had crazy mag wobble. I wrapped the top of a mag in stretch wrap and JB Welded the inside of the receiver around the mag well. It molded very well and created a really good magazine well with any type of mag I've put into it over the years. That's my plan in case PSA decides they don't want to fix this one. A sharpie will probably cover up the blem on the sight block.

I don't plan on bayonetting too many Ivan's coming across the front pasture into the house, so I probably don't need to worry about the bayonet closing on either side of the groove. It does lock up tight on the lug when you fix it though.

 

For anyone interested, PSA has agreed to take the rifle back in and do the warranty work on it for the items I pointed out. I'll keep the group updated to see how it pans out.

 

I thought I would update the thread as I heard back from PSA via email today. They indicated the problems are solved and they rifle is "being recoated" today. We'll see how it turns out after nearly two months of warranty work.

 

I saw the name, and the spyker c8 came to mind… and I can’t shake that association. Lol

 

The good folks at PSA emailed me today, proactively, to state the rifle had unacceptable blemishes after the initial recoat so they had to do it a second time and it will be shipping out tomorrow.

If it arrives by the end of the week that will put it over 60 days for warranty work. I'm not sure if that's good or bad but we'll see what the final product looks like shortly.

 

The big brown truck brought my newly warrantied rifle back from PSA on Thursday. The warranty work that was supposed to be about 30-45 days took about 70 days to complete, longer than expected but it’s not as if I was pinned down under enemy fire while they fixed this rifle to get it back on the line.

The finish of the rifle appears to have been stripped and reapplied. I can find no blemishes in the finish, though the gun is dirty. The warranty department indicated they put 30 rounds through it to ensure functionality, but it was apparent they did not clean it.

The bayonet no longer can snap closed outside of the channel on the lower handguard and is very tightly fitted. The retention sleeve is almost too tight, which makes me think they may have overcompensated to ensure the bayonet fitted right. In any event, it’s working right.

The pistol grip was replaced and no longer has a chip missing. The also appear to have replaced the rear sling swivel with one that has the bracket bent tighter. If I force the swivel it can come out either side, but it doesn’t appear it will wiggle out on its own now.

The last item was probably the biggest grip, magazine fitment. PSA appears to have tightened up the mag well considerably. I’ll have to inspect it closer this afternoon to see what they did. There is still a small amount of side to side wiggle, but nothing I would call out of place on an AK patterned rifle. The front to back wobble is all but gone, though, which is probably the more important of the two.

All in all I’m happy with the repair work they did and I can give a thumbs up endorsement of the PSA warranty department. They took a new, non-blemmed, rifle and fixed it as I would have expected. Now to shoot it!

 

I suspect it's the spike style bayonet. And perhaps to differentiate from the Norinco with the actual moniker Type 56?