Australian L4's

[tombear]

Hi Peter
As he knew I was looking for one Mike Priest had one of the live guns he had got from New Zealand chopped for me. I could have got the wrong end of the stick but I.m pretty sure he said New Zealand.

The body is a standard Enfield done Mk 3 with the original "BREN Mk 3" struck out and with "GUN M/G 7.62 mm L4A4" above and "MG 43GA" below. Behind the sight is UE 73 over and A19775 below UE55 A326 which is struck through. There's a profusion of marks near the barrel nut on the left and 79 arrow H followed by a large 72 on the right.

The butt slide is also a Mk 3 and has UE 73 A 19775 along side the selector switch. Behind the pistol grip is a Z and arrow

The barrel is marked CF 7.62mm A19775 a Enfield D mark 72 MG 5526 On the top of the barrel is FB351. No markings have been removed or struck out although there aresome are very hard to read small ones.

The barrel nut is rather worn and has A19775 in electric pencil.

Since he didn't want to chop a perfectly good 7.62 block Mike chopped a bog standard .303 and put that in. Irronicaly I did once have a brand new 7.62 block held for me in NZ but the amount of hassle it would have took to get it fitted put me off doing anything about it.

I'd actually prefare for it to be UK issue as it would fit in the collection better but unless he meant it came from a dealer in NZ I've always assumed it was one of their service guns. It came over in 2004.

It could really do with a full cosmetic refurb as its showing it's use. To that end I've collected all the parts you can legally replace in the uk all shiny new, woodwork, sights, mag well cover, screws and nuts. Just need someone to do the hard bits!

Can do pics if anyone's interested.

ATB

Tom

Are you saying that you've got a deactivated L4 or a deactivated NZ L4 Tombear? I operated with NZ troops during the same era and outside NZ, they were sourced from pooled Ordnance stocks but internally, they were a one-off purchase with spare parts presumably being supplied by Australia in the same way as spare parts for the L1A1's. Don't forget that there were only a few parts that were specific to the L4 series so it didn't cause a logistical problem