"Now if you could come up with a RELIABLE conversion for 75 round RPK drums that didn't involve any alterations to the weapon, I think you'd have a real winner.
If you were able to design a method whereby your converted mags were also able to activate the bolt hold open (again with no alterations to the weapon), you might well make enough off your invention to retire."
The drum conversions are unreliable? Mine was at first, but I opened up the feed lip a hair and it runs great, now
. The worst part was the tail of the spring coming un-riveted and fixing that, but that wasn't the conversion's fault. The loss of the bolt hold open is unfortunate, but I'll bet a fix for that isn't super hard to come up with; I'll add that to the list of "ideas" --a drop in bolt catch trip for the AK drum followers
As far as weight and bulk, I was skeptical too, until I had the RPD drum/belt in hand; they are marginally larger in diameter to the AK drum, but actually weigh a bit less (unloaded, of course
). As anyone who's used one knows, the RPK drum is far more "reasonable" on the VZ than the AK due the shorter grip spacing; the heavier weight is evenly placed on both hands and closer to the body. If the belt conversion
works (emphasis also on "if"
), you'd have a platform more compact and lighter than the RPD or M249 that still runs mags (without destroying them).
I am very cognizant of VZ users' desire for light and compact platforms, thus my desire for a belt fed with the same qualities
. The biggest stumbling block for the idea is probably that VZ owners tend to view the gun very pragmatically, since it is such a practical and effective design, and may resist converting it into a pure range toy, even temporarily
TCB
It doesn't have a hammer forged/chrome lined bbl (and, at least in some cases, a properly sized barrel diameter), or properly positioned safety for easy manipulation. In other words I wouldn't trade my TGI imported D-Technik for one...on the other hand I'm not so sure that I would purchase my vz.58 over again if the VZ-2008 were available (or at least prevalent) at the time of purchase, because it's really hard to make a case for the features listed above being worth twice as much (unless you need it to be 100% serviceable for long periods of time in harsh environments without proper care). While on the topic of other variants, the OOW VZ-2000, on the hand, is an abomination from most every report I've heard (if anyone has other experiences please share them)...improperly reverse-engineered, exhibits poor quality construction, and is quite costly by comparison. IMO there's only two worthy competitors the vz.58 and the VZ-2008. If you have the funds for one that's a little nicer, I would invest in the former...if not (or perhaps there's something else on the list that the left over funds could be used for) be frugal and purchase the later, which should still serve you well for a long time if you treat it right.
