AK durability (long)

General Firearms Other Semi-Automatic Rifles
1

I found a link to a test from the mid 1960s on another site where the then standard M14 was compared against the M16E1, and the AK 47. (Among alot of other things 183 pages worth)

Pretty interesting reading. Particularly the part about the durability of the AK. I assume these were captured AK’s from Vietnam that they used in the test. There was even a note saying that they didn’t know how many rounds had been fired out of the AKs before the test.

Durability:

Ak 47 - Out of 29 Rifles and 187,263 rounds fired, there were only 6 parts that had to be replaced. 31,210.5 Mean rounds fired between replacements. Geez!!

M16E1 - Out of 120 rifles and 386,219 rounds fired, 2,169.8 Mean rounds fired between replacements.

M14 - Out of 120 rifles and 327,903 rounds fired, 4,372 Mean rounds fired between replacements

It is interesting what failed:

Top 3

M14

25 Firing Pins
7 Extractors
6 Ejectors

M16E1

48 Retainer Pins (I assume this is the FP retaining pin)
37 Disconnectors
20 Ejector Springs

AK

2 Extractors
1 Trigger Spring
1 Front Sight
1 Disconnector Spring
1 Firing Pin

So much for the vaunted superiority of the M14 over the M16E1, even at this early stage in the game.

Accuracy was pretty interesting, too.

Mean Radius (@100 m)

M14 - 2.44 in
M16E1 - 2.11 in
AK - 2.51 in

Extreme Spread

M14 - 8.8 in
M16E1 - 6.7 in
AK - 8.56

A ratty shot out AK is pretty much just as accurate a a brand new out of the Box USGI M-14… The riflemans, rifle…Oh the agony…

My question is:

Are the current crop of Arsenal SA/SGL guns up to THIS standard?

2

They’re probably better.

3

Comparing rifle tests from 50 years ago has little to do with current production rifles IMO.

Here’s the problem:
AK’s are built to a wide variety of standards with a humongous variation in parts quality depending on not just the nation of manufacture but also the factory itself and also the time period in which they were manufactured. Without knowing what nation or factory or year or ammunition used–let alone a half century ago… this data isn’t very useful. In the nearly 200 pages of the test report surely some of these are listed but once again, largely do not apply to guns currently manufactured and imported–just to guns snagged in Vietnam a long time ago.

Do Arsenals hold up? Yes, Arsenal makes one of the very finest examples of both the AK and AKM currently commercially available in the United States. However, you need to take these numbers all with a grain of salt because there’s a whole lot more going on than just some report from 50 years ago. Course’, I’ve seen far too many broken AK’s to have the rose-tinted glasses of, “uber-ultra-best reliability” that many attribute to the system.

Not all guns are equal.

4

For years I was a DIE-HARD AK guy. In fact, I was late to the AR game considering how long I have been a serious shooter. But I have always thought AK durability and reliability was massively overstated. I have had far more parts breakage from AKs than ARs.

CAVEAT: we are talking about WASRs and Tantals. Who knows what hobo Centrury arms had putting these guns together. My old FEG was unstoppable.

5

Yes, AK’s will take a shit ton of abuse and continue to work. However, when it does come time to repair them, they are much more labor intensive than the M16 FOW.

You cannot simply replace an ejector on an AK like the M16. You also can’t simply swap a firing pin or barrel. AK barrels have to be pressed into place with a hydraulic press. I had to rebarrel 5 of them in Iraq with a large brass hammer and punches. It was not one of my favorite moments.

6

Re: The accuracy results. I’m not the world’s greatest marksman, but in my experience, the AK’s reputation for inaccuracy largely results from the poor sights and triggers. With aftermarket trigger parts and sights or an optic, I’ve found the AK to be entirely accurate enough for what it does; this is even more true for the 5.45 versions, and the 5.56 versions often seem neck-and-neck with a good AR-15, in my experience.

7

What are the parts you gents have seen break on AKs? What would be your list of “must have” replacement parts to have handy?

Spooky

8

It didn’t say country of manufacture in the report. Just Soviet Family of weapons (as they were referred to in the report). I would assume they were Chinese or possibly Russian but it didn’t say. The ammo that I reported here on was a mixture of Chicom ball and Finnish Ball. They also used API but I didn’t put those results in since most of us don’t have access to it.

There is ALOT more data in the report. Most of it related to the actual employment of the weapons rather than the accuracy/durability. That data was pretty much a footnote to the rest of the test.

They also tested the Stoner 63(Rifle and Automatic Rifle), the M60, Colt Automatic Rifle and the RPD and DPM.

This was just the data that I found most interesting. I was expecting to see similar failure rates for all the rifles with significantly worse accuracy out of the AK system.

I also found it interesting that the AR was for all intents and purposes almost as “durable” as the M-14 even that early in it’s life. I know it has become even more “durable” as design changes have been incorporated. The parts that failed on the M-14 also seemed to be more serious than those on the M16E1.

I just thought this might stimulate some “interesting discussion.”:wink:

9

To add to what’s been said already, the AK’s that I’ve seen screw up are overwhelmingly the post BATF US receivered and barreled AK’s, home builds, Century builds, and late Romanian builds.

Properly built factory AK’s do tend to be about as bombproof a small arm as has been designed. This includes pre-1989 import ban, post ‘89, pre’ 94 ban imports, and the Arsenal Inc. rifles.

Anything made by man can and will fail, but you have a much less likely hood of that happening with a factory built weapon.

The only AK bolt carrier I’ve seen fail was a Romanian AK-74 from about 4 years ago. The Romanians were always the red headed step kids in the Warsaw Pact. After the Revolution in '89, when state control of the arsenals in Romania ended and they were privatized, quality slipped. Most of the people who knew what they were doing went to work for other, higher paying firms across Europe, or found other work. What was left was an arsenal operating on a shoe string budget with people who really didn’t know what they were doing.

Century Arms is like Walmart…they’ll go in and tell a company what they will pay for a firearm and that company has be build to that price point.

On the whole, I would expect an Arsenal Bulgaria, Arsenal Inc., or Izmash AK to run as hard as any pre 1989 import ban Chinese, Yugoslavian, Hungarian, or Egyptian AK.

IG is also right in that while an AK was designed to survive a peasant conscript army, if and when something does break, it’ll usually take an armorer to get it back up and running.

10

Funny, my first AK build was with a brass hammer and punches…Arsenal makes an excellent quality AK and when matched with the right ammo in 5.56 is quite competitive with an open-site AR/M-16

bvmbandit

11

Oh fuck, that was definitely not fun. I imagine the liberal use of kroil. I have found it easier to pull barrels on Yugos for whatever reason. Romanian and old Russian guns always suck.

12

I agree. That said, there are far more many of them in circulation which is going to skew that stat a bit

13

I don’t really consider the cheaply built parts rifles that Century hobbles together as being representative of the AK’s abilities regardless of how many are in circulation. The same is true of the current crop of Romanian plinkers.

You get what you pay for.

In my experience Bulgarian and Russian made AK’s are among the best. I own several and use them often. In my experience they are as trouble free as you could ever expect a rifle to be.

With that being said, I have a Colt M16A2 that I’ve ran hard for 12 some years and I’ve yet to break any parts and I honestly can’t remember the last malfunction I had where I wasn’t doing something goofy like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2GSYuvcAQ

I’ve found the M16/AR15 to be a very reliable system. I’ve primarily stuck with Colt over the years, and I know opinions vary on them, but I’ve not been kind to my primary shooters but they’ve been very kind to me. Out of all the rifles I own I’ve never replaced a single part in them including my AR15A2 Sporter II that I bought back in 1986.

While I do read such reports and digest their data because they generally have a much larger sample set that I have, I still place more value on my own experiences. Because of that I trust Colt AR’s and I trust Russian AK’s. I believe if I get a good example of either, both will serve me a lifetime with minimal concern for either parts failures of functional failures.

14

I would love to see the original link or PDF if you wouldn’t mind posting it.

-Chris