So, as i was looking around at the history of the Ishapore 2a1 i read that it was manufactured in place of the FAL due to manufacturing difficulties.
Then i notice something interesting:
The Ishapore magazines look a lot like the FAL magazines
Ive never had either an ishapore or an FAL in my hands, so i dont know, but are the magazines for both rifles interchangeable? Are they similar enough to mod an existing FAL mag to use in the 2a1?
Im very curious cuz i really would love to have one of these Ishapore rifles.
I mean a .308 SMLE? Shit, sign me up for the gurhka corps or somethin
Really not sure. I had a 2A1at the same time I had an L1A1 magazine cut variant in addition to a Belgian pattern and nothing apparently rang a bell that magazines might interchange nor did I ever see any info that indicated that was possible. The 2A1 magazine spring I had was 2 springs “sewn” together by overlapping and wrapping the splice with thin copper wire…neat, tidy, and looked like it would have been mind numbingly tedious.
Best I can recall, the Indian 1A1 FAL was kind of a reverse engineered copy of Belgian and Commonwealth pattern FAL’s and little if anything will interchange. I occasionally would get parts in from TAPCO that would appear to be L1A1, but wouldn’t quite fit and upon closer inspection would find stamps indicating Indian 1A1 parts.
Just came across this thread, so I took a minute to compare the mag from my L2A1 with a FAL mag. They are quite a bit different. The L2A1 mag tapers toward the front, where the FAL mag is fairly straight. The feed angle, follower and lips are also different.
The L2A1 mag is inserted straight into the mag well, where the FAL mag must be rocked in. Then there is the 12 vs 20 round capacity difference.
Pretty much, the only thing they have in common is that they are both feed devices for 7.62N rifles.
