Get both? Or is one preferred over the other?

For a SAR and AK47

I’d go the spring route first. Then if needed, only if needed, get the buffer. The one buffer I tried literally got beat into pieces in just a few hundred rounds. The rifle it was in wasn’t terribly over gassed either.

Picked up two wolff springs. You wouldn't happen to know how many rounds they should be good for do you?

Was reading about the ALG and apparently they never wear out?

I’ve never wore one out. But I did have an issue of FTF and a few FTE on a WASR10. I changed out the factory recoil spring to new old stock polish surplus spring and have had ZERO problems since.

The WASR was an old model built with surplus parts, I had put over 5000 rods through the gun but it’s hard telling how many rounds were shot when it was an Romanian gun before being cut up and rebuilt into a WASR.

I’d say a MINIMUM of 5/6 thousand rounds.

Any experience with adjustable gas pistons? Namely for a galil.

That would just be a KNS piston of the right length, correct?


I use a KNS on my AKSU and need to get more for other AKs. KNS will knock down the gas some. I found my AKSU is a little under gassed with the KNS without a can but it's also got a tiny barrel.

The KNS will do a great job of bleeding off excess gas.

So a KNS will work on an old school galil as long as I get the right length?

Just asking because the only stuff I could find were about galil ace

It's just a stick. Galil gas piston is threaded in and pinned like any other AK.

AGP-A-18 may fit. KNS has always been good answering my KNS piston questions. Give them a call. They have tons of options.

I did the ALG recoil spring and buffer. Not a lot of round through it to tell the long term reliability but it appears to shoot a little smoother/softer.

I would put a buffer in every AK you own, unless you don't mind the bolt carrier hammering the hell out of the rear trunnion with every round fired.

AKs are over gassed by design. They last a long, long time even hitting the trunnion.

A buffer is a shitty cheap bandaid that fixes nothing and still transfers energy into the rear trunnion beating on it and affecting recoil.

A spring can help mitigate how hard it hits. A KNS piston has stop the carrier from hitting altogether. It's a very weird feeling when an AK carrier doesn't bottom out. Very smooth. Very light recoil. Little touch though as you are deliberately short stroking the gun slightly.

My first AK was a WASR bought in 2013 and had that awful Tapco G2 trigger. The recoil spring was really weak but at the time I didn't know it. I think they puposely used a weak recoil spring due to the poor shape of the hammer.
When I ground down the back of the hammer it smoothed out enough that I started to get peening on my carrier. So I tried a buffer. First three rounds were all feed failures in an otherwise reliable platform, so in the trash it went. Later dropped in an ALG spring and all is fine now.
Any surplus spring is an upgrade to the WASR spring.

Only AK I own with a buffer now is my M90PS with that weird overly complicated pin lock on the dust cover. Read some reports of that pin binding due to trunnion getting beat up. No issues so far but now that the gas is dialed in I'll let it break in a bit more then pull the buffer and see if I need more spring.

As mentioned, a buffer is a band aid, and sometimes not even a good one.

If you had a WASR-10/63, the problem is that they are mostly used parts, typically only with a new barrel and receiver, along with whatever 922r parts Century would install.

The recoil spring was possibly the original one from 30-40 years ago. The only way to really tell how worn it is would be to compare length to a new spring.