All,

I've been reading this group for a while but this is my first post. I
have a Maadi ban-era AK rifle that I am now modifying into the rifle
that I want. The rifle has had the threads turned off of the muzzle
and the bayonet lug locks removed - rather crudely too. No big deal,
the rifle was inexpensive by AK standards and what I want is an
intermediate caliber rifle/carbine. It is that. I am now modifying the
rifle to be a little more tactically oriented. I put a Romanian side
folding stock on it, which I love, and am modifying the rest of the
furniture as well. I also bought one of those pin-on AK-74 looking
muzzle breaks for it. That is where the trouble began. The bayonet lug
had to removed the rest of the way, which was not hard, just
unexpected and time time consuming. A little flat file work squared it
away so that I could slip the muzzle break on over where it had been.
I drove the front pin out of the front sight assembly, slipped the
break on, and drove the replacement pin into place. It looked great. I
was disapointed because it rattled every so slightly. I looked at it
more closely and realized that it is canted to one side, just enough
so that if I were to fire the rifle the bullet would strike the inside
edge of the break. Not good. I am looking for any advice from someone
who may have encountered this problem and found a workable solution. I
may resort to removing the break permanently. That would piss me off.
I also bought the UltiMax picatinney rail gas tube on the rifle. I
found that the tube cannot be tightend down completely without it
binding the gas piston. When the piston runs smoothly the rail
rattles. It does me no good to have a loose scope mount. I also bought
the lower handguard with the rails on it. Again, it looks great, but
it binds on the barrel bands that hold the gas tube. It can be
modified with a little careful file work, but the friggin handguard
cost me 50 bucks, the gas tube cost 100. I now have over $300 in
accessories for this $300 rifle and instead of a rifle that has all of
the features that I want I have a rifle that is nearly unusable unless
I remove some of the mods! I hope some experienced carbine afficienado
has some good ideas.
In the mean time - Happy Easter and thanks for listening.

~NKS