Is there anything in particular that I need to look for. I know to try and stay away from Century Arms stuff. A local gun shop has a Century FAL supposedly built on an Imbel receiver for $1195. Is this a good deal or should I keep looking? Also is there a way to identify an Imbel receiver?
You can find it cheaper.I saw some at centerfiresystems.com for $699 and some made by enterprise running $899.
SOG has inch pattern guns for about $750. Don't know who the assembler is. I have an STG 58 myself and its great. I also built a G1 for my daughter. Very accurate and wonderful gun. The G series guns are metric style, and are superb. The price for the Century is WAY too high. Century should pay people to take their crap.
I have also heard to stay away from the Century ones, but no one can tell me why. A buddy has one and his is great. Anybody know why?
Some of the Century guns have been known to run just fine. Then again, many of them also have non-stop problems. It is my understanding that the Imbel components are excellent quality, so a Century gun with them is more likely to function well, though even some of them have problems due to being assembled in a poor manner. The main problem I've heard of with Century guns is that there seems to be little attention to detail when it came to the assembly of the guns. Many of them seem to have headspacing issues. In fact I checked out 2 Century Cetme's and a Century FAL a week ago, and they ALL had pretty significant headspacing issues. Think of the Century stuff as a more often than not do-it-yourself gun that will need some work to run well. I would NEVER pay $1100+ for a Century built gun. To give you an idea, I just found a typical "kit" FAL For $1000, and I believe it is made entirely with Imbel components. Basically it is my understanding that FAL's like that were full Imbel guns but, because of import regulations they were basically disassembled for importation then reassembled here, so they are excellent quality to begin with being Imbel and all. That's worth $1k. I'd only pay $1k for a fully Imbel built FAL (it seems Enterprise imported and built some of these), DSA, Springfield imported, etc.
I am more that likely SOL at this point. I doubt I am going to find anything reasonably priced and of a decent quality at this point in time.
Excuse my ignorance here I don't know much of anything about FALs but am interested in picking one up some time in the semi near future also and would like to learn as much as possible before I part with cash. The owner of the century FAL I know says the only century part on his is the upper reciever, everything else is Aussie. Is that the same as Imbel?
Might want to try Gunbroker or other similar online auction sites. I have not looked there, but its a possibility.
Imbel stands for Imbel, Brazil. They are receivers that were made in Brazil. They are one of the better imported receivers from what I have read on FALs. I have looked on gun broker and alot of the FALs below $1000 have no good descriptions on what parts were used. I have thought about getting a receiver and parts kit but I don't know if I could undertake the project myself.
