Quoted: I didn't think WASR's or SAR's were made with any kind of military parts kits.  Granted century does make some guns from parts kits, but they still use a lot of their own internals and parts. Considering I've only seen rust this bad on a WASR, and never on a military AK, I'm inclined to believe its the quality of the gun.  Hell, maybe its just WASR's period.  I know I saw a SAR that went through katrina underwater and soaking for some time and it wasn't this bad.

WASR's and SAR's are made in Romania by the good people who make rifles for the Romanian Army, so in a way you are correct, they are not made from military parts kits, they are barnd new rifles that haven't been abused by ill trained soldiers in a third world hole for forty years. The Romanian rifles are of course made for the civilain market, but unlike many Chinese rifles of years gone by weren't really built to a different standard than the military variants. What Century does to the rifles to make them 922r compliant is to widen the mag hole, and add four-five US parts. The main difference between a "quality kit build rifle" and Romanian junk is that the Romanian junk is built up on a genuine Eastern European reciever in eastern europe, while the "quality kit build" is built on a backwards engineered US stamping.

The reason you are more likely to see rusted up Chinese or Romanian gun is that for every one "quality kit build" you see you are likely to see ten or more Romanian or Chinese guns. My experience is that more often that not when you come across a junker AK that just will nnot run period it is almost always a kit build. The Chinese and Romanian guns will have thier problems, but I haven't seen many that couldn't be fixed fairly easily.

What I find extroidanary is that we have five pages of posts stating that AKs are the cheapest most indestructible rifle ever built, but that if you use the ammo they were built to use they will become junk piles. AKs were desgined with corrosive ammo in mind, clean your weapon properly after you use it and it will be fine. You can shoot nothing but hand loaded match grade ammo then never clean it and it will fail you, those are the facts.