Malay contract L2A1

[mrclark303]

Morning all,

I hope all our UK members have escaped the rolling storms undamaged .. !

I headed on up to the Birmingham International Arms fair last Sunday and finally had the opportunity to say hello to our very own Roger Payne, always nice to put a face to a name.

My main mission of the day was to acquire another SLR for the collection, this time an old spec deactivated Lithgow L2A1, all matching numbers, really nice example and a piece that's been missing from my Inch pattern Fal collection for a long while.

This one is 1964 dated and Malaya contract ... interesting piece, it is currently fitted with an incorrect British three slot Flash Eliminator instead of the Tactical Trumpet these contract L2's were famous for.

That spiked my interest, so I looked a bit closer at this piece, it seems I have an example pre 1988 section 1 fun hardware!

Over on another forum, a few of us have been fondly reminiscing about Pat walker, an RFD based in Gateshead in the 1980's. He was well know for his conversions of full auto firearms to Sec1 in the "have what you want" pre 1988 happy days here in the UK.

Now Pat and his team did a proper job of the conversions, but others took a far more relaxed approach!

Well this L2A1 is clearly a product of those long gone happy times (not one of Pats conversions), close study revealed London proof House 1982 marks and a section 1 modification .... a pin had been placed to stop the fire lever being rotated round to the rock and roll indent ...

Yep, a full Auto light machine gun and all that was altered to render it semi auto was the addition of a TMH mounted steel pin!

It seems insane today, but back then in the UK, a more relaxed approach was taken, the steel "stop pin" was not uncommon!

Then came murderous nut job Michael Ryan, and all the good wholesome fun stuff was swept away with the stroke of a pen!

If it was me, I would have cut the tip from the safety sear, machined the bolt carrier tripping extension away and replaced the fire selector and trigger plunger with the semi only units from the L1A1.

I was going to replace the FE during restoration, but I think I will retain it now as its part of this L2A1's history and a reminder of long gone happy times for us UK shooters!

I will post pics when shes ready for display..

Cheers all, John.

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