Taiwanese T65/86/91 Gas Piston AR?

General Firearms Other Semi-Automatic Rifles
1

Does anyone have any info or experience with the Taiwanese series of assault rifles? This system has been around for 30+ years but I really can’t find too much about it.

Is the system nothing other than a Tokarev gas piston retrofit to an otherwise conventional AR platform?

2

I’m pretty sure the only country that ever bought those things besides the Taiwanese are the Costa Ricans.

I don’t have any hands on experience, only anecdotal info, but they aren’t well regarded in terms of reliability or QC.

3

According to the highly researched and reliable data on Wikipedia, the T91 is used by

*  Bosnia
*  Indonesia (Unconfirmed)
*  Jordan
*  Kuwait
*  Taiwan
*  United Arab Emirates

I’m interested to know what the Taiwanese have done (if anything) to deal with carrier tilt, cam pin drag and early bolt failure.

4

I remember Kokalis doing an article about it back when he was still with SOF, but I don’t know of any other open source info than that.

5

One thing I notice is this rifle has a full-length gas system. I wonder what bearing that may have had on carrier tilt?

I remember that SOF review. The example he had kept dropping the mag.

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7

Seems that I remember reading that Manuel Noriega’s body guards used them.

8

From the carbine pictured above, it looks like the lower is pretty much standard M-16. It looks like the gas system has evolved significantly from the rifle shown in my initial post.

This rifle seems to be somewhat of an enigma. It has been around for three decades but, other than some pictures on the Internet, there doesn’t seem to be much info about it.

Anybody have a copy of Jane’s Infantry Weapons? That might be a source for some firm info…

9

I do have the experience using T65 and T65K2 while I was serving in Taiwanese Army some years ago.
I remembered T65K2 improved quite a lot over T65. T65 sucks! (They are old/suck enough so K2 came up to replace them.)
The short stroke gas piston driven system on T65K2 works pretty well under the extremely humid weather in Taiwan and some small islands close to mainland.
In the boot camp, we use T57 (M14) for basic training. I like T57 (M14) better than any T65 series rifle, they are a bit heavier but very very accurate in my hands….

10

Thank you for posting your experiences!

Do you recall anything inside the T65K2’s lower receiver that is different from what’s inside a US M16? Did you ever seen any wear inside the buffer tube that looked like this? If so; did the wear ever get so bad as to disable the firearm?

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  1. if my memory serves me right, fire control inside K2 comes with safe, 1 and 3 rounds burst. M16 should be safe, semi auto or full auto, right? I am not sure. I never touch/see a M16 in person. (Other Taiwanese Army units they have M16.)

2.NO. At least not in my memory.
I recall the biggest issue on 65 series rifles was the corrosion in the barrel.
I believed they are chrome lined, but maybe due to improper cleaning or not-so-clean-burning ammo plus humidity…

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13

That ERDL camo looks a lot better than the ACU crap in the top picture.

14

I guess we now know where the Sully stock came from.

Brick

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