How bad are Golani's really?
I hear all kinds of stuff against CIA. How bad are the Golani's really? What are the main problems with them? Can they be fixed easy? I'm building a Galil on a ORF receiver any advise?
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You have read all the stuff about CIA? Or do you mean CAI...Century Arms International? Personally, If they can screw up an AK, that can be built perfectly in 3rd world countries, I wouldn't trust them to glue toothpicks together.
But if you must find out for yourself, they say experience is a great teacher.
You might want to use the search function, and look for more topics on this...and there are several.
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I've had at least a half dozen different brands of ammo through
mine, both brass and steel case. Haven't had a hickup yet.
Being a machine, I have about 95% confidence in it. Death and
taxes are about the only 100%ers! [:D]0 -
From what I gather, like everything else from CAI, build quality on these is highly variable. There are good ones out there. . .and plenty of bad ones.
Issues I'm aware of?
-The original ORF receivers weren't properly heat treated, and had all kinds of problems. The later Caspian cast receivers are supposedly much better. I believe these later ones start with the "GLN" serial prefix and the ORF ones "GOL".
-The CAI guns "guts" are salvaged from military surplus Guatemalan (really) rifles, and some of the internal parts are supposedly pretty bad, corroded to the point of barely being functional.
-Folding stocks supposedly came from different sources. Some aren't standard for Galils (they're South African, or other), and they don't all lock "rock solid" the way they're supposed to. This issue may be easy to fix by shimming. .don't know.
-Many of the guns (especially the Caspian frame ones) have an issue where bullets feed too low smacking into the bottom breech of the barrel, causing failure to load issues.
-I've heard about issues with locking lugs peening with use. . .can't really say more about this one. Also heard that Century was grinding the bolt lugs down to make the gun headspace correctly. . .that's BAD.
-These can have the typical CAI sloppy build issues, including crooked barrels (!) and canted sights.
Ultimately, any of these problems "can" be fixed with appropriate application of better parts and gunsmithing, its just a question of cost-effectiveness. EG how much money do you want to sink into a $700 gun to make it run right?
My personal gun does have a nice rock-solid stock which appears to be the correct Israeli-type one, the barrel appears to be brand new, and and the guts appear to be in good shape. So at least there I did OK.
Unfortunately, I've got the bullet striking base of barrel failure to feed issue and the gun jams a lot. . .negating probably the single biggest advantage of the Galil platform, which is its reliability. The problem occurs more often with certain magazines. Supposedly this problem can be fixed by installing a feed ramp, or other ways, but I haven't gotten around to it.
As a cool-looking range toy, its awesome, but without an overhaul and some serous "torture" type reliability testing, I would never DREAM of actually using it for defense. If that's what you're after, look elsewhere.
Despite the above, I can't really be too upset with it. I got this right at the time of the first Obama gun panic when they had a really bad rep, and a few of the dealers were blowing them out. If I remember right, I paid only $629 for it, with bayo lug and two mags, and I figured that even if the gun itself was bad, I couldn't take too bad a loss on it as a source of parts for a future build.
EDIT, responding to below:
quote:Originally posted by cbyerly
I have one and it is an incredible shooter and has never failed me. I would discount any bad reviews since they may have been posted by non-owners who are perpetuating urban legends. A lot of these kinds of posters have no hands-on experience.
I **DO** own one, and its been disappointingly unreliable. See above. Its not an "urban" legend that every time I take the gun out I have issues with bullet noses smacking into the bottom of the barrel and jamming the gun. This problem isn't "just me" or mine, its recognized and fairly common to various Galil builds. Apparently the as-built gun lacks an effective bullet guide and needs one. Its not a prohibitive fix, but it does involve drilling out one of the rivets in the front trunion, putting in a new guide and then either tapping and screwing it in, or riveting it. . .probably NOT something I'm inclined to do myself at home.
Again, some of this is probably just luck of the draw. If you're lucky, you may get a good one, and not have issues. If you're unlucky, there could be problems. In my opinion, you'd be foolish to discount the many reports of bad guns, just because some of them seem to be OK.
Lets face it, if the first run guns weren't problematic, why did CAI have to switch manufacturers of the receivers?
I'd add that when it isn't jamming mine is a reasonably good shooter, but I think that's more a function of the fundamentally strong Israeli design than anything else. The stock is surprisingly comfortable for a folding design and locks absolutely rock solid, the sights are great (long radius and easy to see), recoil is minimal (which you should hope from a 9lb .223!), and practical accuracy is good. So apart from this "minor" issue of the thing not being able to run through a magazine without locking up (Mrs. Lincoln, other than that, how did you like the play?) I'm pretty satisfied.
A few other things about these worth mentioning, and this is true of ALL the guns, including the true Israeli made ones: The receiver cover is really hard to remove and then once removed, really hard to replace. This is by design to promote accuracy, since the rear sight is attached to it. Unfortunately, because of this design, the guns zero may move a bit after taking it apart for routine maintenance, so beware.
Another issue common to all of these is that they're really rough on brass. They'll toss empty shells 30 feet (making them hard to retrieve), and badly dent the empty case on the way out so that they can't be easily reloaded. If you're firing cheapo steel case ammo (which with this gun, I mostly do), no issue. But this could be a "deal breaker" if you want to reload brass.0 -
I have one and it is an incredible shooter and has never failed me. I would discount any bad reviews since they may have been posted by non-owners who are perpetuating urban legends. A lot of these kinds of posters have no hands-on experience. 0 -
Just for the record, my is a GLN. 0
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