G3A3: Last Battle Rifle On Earth

[Panther Al]

Granted, my experience has been Metric: those are garbage.

[dragoon500ly]

I've fired all three, if forced to make a final choice, I'd have to go with a FN-FAL, I own the SAR-48 from SA and have throughly enjoyed it for almost eleven years with no problems (insert fist knocking on wood!).

I fired the G3 when qualifying for my 'shooter's rope' and just plain didn't like the feel of the weapon, not one I would like to go into harm's way with.

The M-14, I'm of two mind's about; I have always love the Garand mechanism and my first choice is my trusty M-1, the magazine is nice, but I've always had issues with the muzzle jump on the -14.

Ah well, to each his own, I'm heading to the range tomorrow for some quality time with my M-1911A1 and M-1 Garand! Long Live the Dinosaurs!!!!

[Sith]

The Mags and the whole imperial/metric thing. Its the mags that kill it the most for me. I want to know when I grab a mag, that its going to work. Its not going to be a metric when my rifle is imperial, or vice versa, that it will feed and not jam because I looked at the magazine lips too hard. And the biggest mistake in FAL production was by the Brits when they converted the drawings to imperial when they started making them in England - and promptly sent them everywhere.

This is becoming less of a problem. I don't know this for a fact, but I believe that all inch pattern rifle production has ceased. Maybe there is one out there churning out spare parts, but the only factories I know of that are still turning FALs are metric. Inch pattern rifles are becoming increasingly rare.

I've been shooting metric rifles for nearly twenty years now and have yet to experience a magazine failure. The only problem I ever had was that one of my past rifles did not like Winchester white box ammo, played with the gas block all afternoon but couldn't get it to work right. Once I switched out ammo it ran quite nicely. I've heard that FALs can be finicky about ammo, and because of that experience I can kind of believe it, but that was the one and only time I had a problem. I've run different ammo through other rifles without any difficulties, so...

[StainlessSteelCynic]

This is becoming less of a problem. I don't know this for a fact, but I believe that all inch pattern rifle production has ceased. Maybe there is one out there churning out spare parts, but the only factories I know of that are still turning FALs are metric. Inch pattern rifles are becoming increasingly rare.

I've been shooting metric rifles for nearly twenty years now and have yet to experience a magazine failure. The only problem I ever had was that one of my past rifles did not like Winchester white box ammo, played with the gas block all afternoon but couldn't get it to work right. Once I switched out ammo it ran quite nicely. I've heard that FALs can be finicky about ammo, and because of that experience I can kind of believe it, but that was the one and only time I had a problem. I've run different ammo through other rifles without any difficulties, so...

India may still have facilities to produce inch-pattern SLRs but I'm pretty sure everybody else has shut down about twenty years ago (UK, Canada, Australia). Anybody else using inch pattern bought L1A1s from one of those four countries (although I think the UK and Australia were the main sellers).

[Sith]

Well, kind of bringing this thread back to the G3. I always thought the HK 32 was kind of cool. During the 60s HK created a 7.62x39 mm version of the G3 to market to countries fielding the AK 47 / SKS. It never took off though and they dropped the idea in the early 70s. I guess they didn't expect the USSR to pass out AKs like candy.

A few prototypes were made, but it never went into production.

[waiting4something]

I was always amazed that the G3 lasted as long as it did in service. I don't know why the Germans didn't just switch over to the HK 33, when so many NATO countries where going to 5.56x45mm. The HK 33 seemed to only get picked up by 3rd world countries.

[Sith]

The reason why the G3 lasted so long in German service is because they wanted to replace it with the G11 instead of a 5.56 rifle. When the cold war ended and the G11 project was canceled the Germans were kind of stuck with the G3 until all the hurdles involved with reunification were cleared. HK read the tea leaves correctly and began working on a new 5.56 rifle right away (the HK 33 was/is heavy for a 5.56 rifle). Hence, by the time the Bundeswehr was ready to start looking at 5.56 rifles (to conform to NATO standards), HK was ready with the G36.

[Brother in Arms]

Magazines! Magazines!Magazines!

In regard to Magazines I had written a decent post about my observations but it got deleted by computer glitch.


M14 mags
At one time I had around 250 M14 magazines made by all the original contract makers in the 50 thru very early 70's All of these functioned flawlessly and most had been in service since Vietnam and were culled out in Iraq Mid 2000's. I also had 50 or so CMI contract magazines made in the original 1997 contract and a few newer ones. I only had one ever fail!!! The only one to fail was an extremely beat 97 contract magazine and the follower would go down and get stuck.

Metric FAL Mags
I have seen a number of these fail...and when I say a number probably 20-30 or more when I worked at Century arms...various countries but most were beat to hell. That being said there guns had receiver geometry problems so they may have worked in a decent gun. I would recommend avoiding Aluminum "parartrooper" FAL magazines except for collectible reasons.. Unless they were perfect and new they seemed to not work reliably and it was due to bending feed lips. I don't have any experience with 30 found Metric magazines.

Inch, Imperial magazines
I have never seen an inch magazine fail. They were heavier than Metric magazines and definitely had a sturdy locking tab brazed on the back, similar to the AK. I have even had good luck with the 30 round L2A1 magazines but seen failures with L4A1 7.62 NATO BREN magazines. These were meant to be gravity fed. They look cool in L1A1 but not reliable. That being said 20 or 30 round L1A1 magazines work fine in the L4A1 BREN.

G3A3 Magazines
I have never seen a Steel G3 magazine fail and to be fair most I have seen were in excellent shape. I have seen a couple of the aluminum magazines fail but these had seen abject abuse!!!! I would say that the aluminum magazines are just as good as the steel but maybe can't take quite the abuse the steel ones can. I haven't used any of the 30 round G3 magazines but they seem to be the same quality as the 20 round aluminum.

Conversely I have seen many steel CETME magazines not feed correctly and malfunction but again century had bad receivers on these guns so they might have worked in an original CETME.


Brother in Arms

[Brother in Arms]

I think one of the reasons the G3 was in service (is as DMR) is because it still works! Also it's simple and cheap (compared to M14 or FAL)

And it has it's faults:
crummy safety lever (leave the safety off, like with AK)
no last round bolt hold open (get used to it)
potent Recoil (toughen up)

It certainly beats a lot of other firearms. I haven't seen an original H&K made gun ever malfunction (only poorly made US clones)

So it's sort of like the AK it's not a Gucci rifle like making today more like a shovel or a Hammer and I kind of like that.

and its got a few weird kinks of assembly dis assembly:

one trick that I learned from an old hand, is when you take the bolt carrier group out of the receiver and you somehow managed to push the bolt head back camming out the rollers so you can't get the bolt carrier back in....All you have to do to reset the bolt head is flip the carrier around backwards and sticking it in the receiver! And voila it will reset the bolt head and you can slide the carrier right back in the receiver.

Brother in Arms

[bobcat]

personally having run all three i'm a big fan of the G3. it might just be ergonomics but i find the G3 to be more accurate out of the box than the FAL or the M14. i never had a big issue with recoil but even with the crappy century clones i've never laid hands on a bad G3.