MI Garand Reciever by C.A.T.

[Dave Waits]

Rick, nobody said they were all good receivers. AAMOF any of them with a SN under 2000 was/should be highly suspect. According to CAI( I did some lengthy research on this five years back) they had a vendor making the receivers that was, shall we say, a little lackluster with their machining operations. They(CAI) admitted they threw away over 600 of this vendor's receivers themselves). The new vendor they got(Lithgow) ran a tight ship and QC was alot better. These are the in-spec receivers. Also, there was some overlap in the receivers between what they could use of the original vendor and Lithgow.

BTW, I scrapped out a few of them myself, they used really good parts-kits on the first 3000 they assembled. I was finding unissued Triggergroups, Op-Rods,Bolts and internals in them, most barrels...not so much.

[mdoerner]

I had CAI s/n 000357. I fired it once, it didn't go thru a full clip w/o failing in some manner. Got a CMP Woodless Garand and used the parts from the CAI to retrofit the woodless and never had a function problem again.

Mike D

[Maple_Leaf_Eh]

Springfield, Winchester, International Harvester, Harrington & Richardson, Breda, Beretta, Springfield Armory and CAI.

[Dave Waits]

There ya go Mike, the majority of them were pretty bad but, they did turn out a few good ones. I was checking over my records after Rick's post and one I scrapped out had a almost-new SA-NM barrel on it! You were liable to find anything on them.


yours was one of the very early ones, what few good ones there were started around 02000 on the SNs.

[emdarms]

Rick, It sounds like you have dealt with the true workmanship of Repo Garand receivers.
I purchased a CIA manufactured Garand years ago when they first were offered. After a conversation with Scott Duff, I decided to sell it for less than I payed. The guy that purchased it wanted it for a wall hanger which made me feel ok about selling.
My buddies and I enjoy taking an M1 Garand and a M1 Carbine or two and just have fun at the 100 and 200 yd. range.
Any day at the range with old buddies is a day worth great memories.

Get one of the SA receivers from the CMP soon. They don't last long. I plan on a trip to Camp Perry myself to pick up a service grade Garand. You can never have to many Garands!

[Calif-Steve]

My local Big 5 store had 3(?) CIA Garands a few years back. The op rods didn't run right and all 3 were poor looking casting jobs. They had neat parts hanging on them, but they were too expensive to buy as a parts kit. I passed on all 3.

[Dave Waits]

Steve, they don't become parts-kits til somebody buys them!!!

[Calif-Steve]

After this project fell apart, Century had a fire sale of Garand parts. My buddy and I bought like $500.00 worth of parts. Something like .20 cents on the dollar deals. What a sale that was!

[Leggett71]

I have worked on a few and they were horrible. I tried to rebarrel one that was cut short and the op rod would not move without severe pulling.. A handful of others had op rods pop out of there track. Their Junk and this is first hand experience from someone who has handled them and has a great reputation for helping people for free in the Garand world. I rebarrel for free and had to take 5 apart in order to scrap them and put a real receiver on the barrel. Rick B

Had the garand gone through by reputable local OK g-smith. bore on barrel gaged almost new. no erosion, headspace was good and it functions without a hiccup.
Also read a book I picked up at collectors firearms that dedicated a chapter to CAI rifles with good reviews. I am sure like with with any firearm there are bad ones on the market but from all I have seen on this one it looks like I have at least a shooter, that from all checks is not a piece of junk. Bottom line is whatever you buy disassemble it, check it out and be safe.

Thanks for all your input.

[Bob Womack]

Congrats on a winner!