M14 Forum

commostud

I was out looking at the pawn shops for a Garand this morning and found 2 other rifles instead. I found a Century Fal rifle, They are asking $600 for it because it is having feeding problems. They think it is the magazines. It has 3 magazines and 2 of them dont feed very well, and the guy thinks the one that is in it feeds just fine. The butt stock needs a new butt pad, and it has some finish coming off near the rear of the lower receiver. Other than that it is in nice shape.

How hard is it to fix the feeding problems and is it worth the $600 bucks they are asking?

If I were to get it I would put a para stock on it and get a 16 inch barrel for it. It would be a truck gun. Something that I can beat around and still shoot reliably.

Thanks

ppcshooter1

Run. Don't walk, run!

Marty

SOCOM42

Yes!!! Run away! They are junk, have had to fix toooooo many of them here. Most required machining on them to fix. Were the mags all metric or inch? Poor quality from cai.

commostud

No problem, I will forget I ever saw this rifle.. Thanks for the advice

jbrooks

Well...

Some Centuries have Imbel receivers and are not necessarily bad rifles. 600 bucks is about right for one of those. They can be fixed up.

Look at the inside of the mag well and see if there is a date stamped...

But the Poly you're looking at is probably reasonable if you can get it for 800 to 900...

JWB

d7cook

Correct. Some Centurys have Imbels marked Imbel and some have Imbels that are not marked Imbel. Do a search for "unibrow". Century receivers with a unibrow have feeding problems and should be avoided. All of the Centurys that are Imbel but not marked that I've seen have "Inch" cuts and are built with Brit or Aussie parts kits. These were usually assembled with some particularly poor craftsmanship but have all the basic parts to make a nice rifle. I bought one like this for $350 at a gun show a few years ago. The barrel would unscrew by hand and there were a lot of other problems but I was able to reassemble it into a nice rifle for not a lot of money. A little searching on FAL files or posting a picture here would help a lot to determine what it is.

LemmyCaution

But the bottom line is that $600 is about the right price for a CAI FAL that does not have feeding problems.

commostud

Ok. I prefer m1, m1a's, and g3 pattern rifles. But for 600 bucks it got my attention. But I will skip this one. The pawn shop next door has a dsa fal for 1600.

SOCOM42

correct,

most of the cai imbel's have few if any problems, the problem ones are the unmarked non imbel rcvrs. These are cast recievers.

I only see for the most part the ones that are brought in for repair.

Last one i had needed to have the ejector block milled to open up the mag well area front to back.

The sides of the well needed to be cut also, they were raw cast surface, the wax had collapsed inward. No effort was made to clean it up other than to fit one mag to it.

When i was done it worked 100% with inch mags. I think that when the wax mold was made they screwed up the shrink factor.

Also had to shorten the oal of the piston to get the carrier fully forward.

KYShooter

Yeah, I like FALs but I would not be interested in that one for $600.

Mindfield

Centuries are funny, youll either get a great accurate reliable shooter, or a lemon. I had a C91(HK91 clone) that was a tack driver, ugly welds, but dang accurate

Seventh Fleet

You know going into this thing that this FAL has problems, run, don't walk away from it. Anyone who's been around FAL's for any length of time knows of the crappy reputation Century FAL's have. However they did build some on IMBEL forged receivers that do have potential but the IMBEL's can still have issues as well.

7th

donmor53

I have what turned out to be a relatively early CAI L1A1 that was built on an unmarked Imbell receiver. I bought the weapon back in late '93 as a complete FAL/L1A1 novice. During my research of the weapon about four years ago...I found it was manufactured and assembled in Austalia and delivered for New Zealand service in cica '63-'64. In it's untouched original CAI thumbhole configuration it fed everything flawlessly with good metric mags. I mean no FTFs ever!

I decided a couple of years ago to update it and sent it to CMP Armory for some work to be done. The barrel was threaded for an FN 2000 style flash supressory that CMP makes...US made FCG parts and gas piston were installed and the finished product had a Gunkote finish applied. While going through the "reno'...Johnny at CMP called at let me know the locking shoulder had been ground on some time in the past. While it still functioned...it was barely within the "no go" range for acceptance. I had a new one installed for 35 bucks the part cost and...as they say...the rest is history.

Now all have to do is replace the British black furniture I installed some years back with Ironwood stuff and I'm all ready to go.

Maybe I just got lucky but as it turned out...this weapon is definitely one of my "go to" semi auto rifles.

Just my experience and .02 on this subject of CAI FALs.

asa sarge

I totally agree with "Mindfield's" statement. I won't say it's 50/50 as to whether you get a gem or a lemon as I feel that they make more good ones than bad - but they DO make bad ones and have a justified rep in regards to customer service, but I wouldn't pass on this rifle "just because" it's a CAI. Mine work just fine and I personally know a lot of guys who are happy with theirs and only one who had a problem which - BTW - was fixed by CAI.

commostud

I have a buddy who has a fal and it is a century and his works great. I will look at the info on his to identify the inbels and see if it is. I don't mind working on rifles. I will learn and do it myself.

Thanks