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Looking for some information on a garand I bought at a garage sale this weekend from a Vietnam vet. It has a danish barrel made in 1961 but has no serial number on the reciever. There are numbers on the upper left of the reciever. Markings indicate Made in USA C.A.T. VT. Can anyone identify the manufacturerof this rifle? Otherwise the rifle is in excellent shape.
Leggett '71
You have a "CAI" M1 rifle, not "CAT". They were produced by CAI, a US ddistributor, about 8-10 years ago, using a new cast receiver & used USGI parts. They originally sold in the $400-500 range, but prices dropped when the shooting community saw how bad they were. I haven't seen any with Danish barrels, but I guess it's possible, or, most likely, a previous owner changed the barrel. The problem is, the receivers are usually far from milspec dimensions & the metallurgy is suspect. Plus, many parts are badly worn. Most do not function reliably. The 2 I have worked on could only be taken apart with a set of pin punches & a mallet. My opinion is that they are unsafe to fire under any conditions other than "life or death".
Thanks for the reply. In short I bought a piece of junk. Owner stated he had had no issues with the gun and had purchased it after he returned from 'nam. Seems to function without problems and barrel is in good shape with crisp rifling. Barrel marking is a crown with VAR. Oh well. Unless someone else has any other info or advice I guess I will chaulk this up to experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neal Myers
Leggett'71
That's a CAI receiver, Centery Arms International. If it has a VAR barrel(Danish), the barrel is worth more than the receiver. they were made in St.Albans, Vt.
As your answers prior have indicated, these rifles were assembled by Century Arms and used parts kits taken from Danish rifles. The rifles were parted out when the original military receivers were refused importation licenses. The newly cast receivers were so poorly made that rifles are difficult to operate and often have ejection and tracking problems with the op rods.
I would suggest you get someone to look at your rifle and, if the parts other than the receiver, are usable, order a receiver from the CMP and get a good, functioning rifle built up from the parts. The Danish parts are pretty good. I have owned a couple of VAR barrels and they were good tight, accurate barrels. Find yourself a qualified smith who can take those parts and reconstruct a Garand for you.
Thanks to all for your help and possibly keeping me from getting hurt. Gun is headed to my local smith for eval and possibly get rebuilt to have a keeper.
My thanks also to the folks who maintain this site for having a forum like this available.
Leggett71
CMP has real Garand receivers for sale right now! Get one and have your parts kit switched over. Good luck.
I can't speak for every CAI parts gun but the M1 I've had for several years is a very accurate and fully functional rifle. All of the parts are Springfield except for the CAI receiver, VAR barrel, and Beretta bolt. I've never had a problem with it and I fire it a lot. I would be interested if anyone knows that there is any real documentation, other than rumors or guesses, that any CAI made receiver has had a catastrophic failure with normal pressure ammunition.
Other than a report from I believe, Fulton Armory on one(Which BTW, mentions no problems with out od spec receiver, headspace, or other dangerous conditions) you won't find anything but second, third and fourth-hand Inernet rumors. I had two CAIs for awhile. Both were in spec in all aspects compared to a set of SA prints and two USGI receivers I measured them against.
AAMOF, I have a CAI receiver on my Reference-book table as a conversation piece. It's perfectly in-spec.
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
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.
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
Springfield, Winchester, International Harvester, Harrington & Richardson, Breda, Beretta, Springfield Armory and CAI.
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.
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!
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.
Steve, they don't become parts-kits til somebody buys them!!!
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!
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick B
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.
Congrats on a winner!
Will reply with a lot of attaboys for the forum. It is great to have a place to ask questions and get honest replys and quick resopnses. Keep up the good work.