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Posted: 8/19/2007 9:16:59 AM EDT
Anyone build with the new Tapco flats with the prebent and cut rails? Are they a pain or better than before?
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I have built two rifles on the "improved" flat. One with standard Tapco lower rails, the other with a modified lower rail. I think the lower rails are tapco's problem. If you line up the holes for the center support rivet and the hammer pin the lower rails are two low, not the top rails too high. The reason I came to this conclusion is that with everything else lined up, the lower rails were still lower than the trunnion "rails". Instead of bending my upper rails down I bent my lower rails up to close the gap. This fix seemed to work for me. After a bit of tweeking, the rifle digested 100 rounds as fast as I could change mags without any failures. I know 100 rounds isn't a lot but it heated her up pretty good. I did not have any trouble with the trigger guard or front trunnion holes lining up on either build, and the rear trunnion holes were pretty close. The jury is still out on the rifle with the modified lower rails, I am just about finished with it and may fire it this weekend. It looks good so far though. Even though they are less work than the Ak-builder flats I still feel that you get a better end product with the Ak-builder flat. And the rivets that Curtis sells are a cut above any other that I have used. _________________ "Whooped 'em again, didn't we Josey?" Outlaw Josey Wales |
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I have built two Romy G's with these flats and after 700rds and 400rds through each rifle no jams. The front and rear trunnion stll need to be fitted but all holes lined up just right. Im in the process of building two more with these flats will post later with results. I made my first bending jig myself and just bought a machined bending jig here off this board. Want to see how much better a machined jig does compaired to a home made one. Later William http://www.georgiagun.com/100_4154.JPG |
| When these flats came in, I was really happy to see that they were prebent Bolt Carrier rails. I lined it up in the jig, then we bent them. Both of them came out with the rear, right side (rear trunion) being about .2 inches higher then the left side. This happened on both of them. I think were gonna fix this by throwing it back in the jig and tapping the rail down in the back a bit more and dremeling it back to side. The front trunion holes lined up perfectly! Just how it should |
Did you rivit the lower rails on? |
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All 5 4 that I built off, the prebent rails sucked. They were not bent in the correct location and needed to be bent more, mine were about 1/8 too high. All the holes lined up well for my Romanian AIM kits, but a ton of fitting work was needed. As expected I had to work on the mag catches but also had to signifcantly grind upper and lower rails more so than other flats. I had to bend the receiver cover outward a bit to open it up in order to install it. Also, the gap already made for installing the bolt carrier was too long, I needed to use a buffer on all of them. I did make my buffers out of some "Baler Belt" that I picked up at mills fleet farm. It is fairly rigid but has some rubbery give to it, plus it is a hair thinned than the buffers sold by copesdist.com. Making them however, is quite labor intensive. |
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