AIA No4 Mk4

[Maxwell Smart]

I would be very interested to see a side by side teardown of and AIA vs the closest comparable Lee Enfield, just to see what was changed and how.

The nearest Lee Enfield equivalent would be the No 4 Mk2. There are not many parts in common.

The AIA action has the hung trigger system of the No 4 Mk2, but is a much "beefier" action.
It uses the Brewer collar sytem for breeching up the barrel. Safety lever is Long Branch style. Bolthead has collar around rim of case head, and plunger ejector.

Not all AIA's will take the Singer style backsight, mainly due to the shape of the rear of the "charger bridge" (no charger loading is possible, bridge acts as rear scope mount point.) Also due to shape of the LHS receiver wall mounting of PH5C sights is impossible. The front sight is a round post - AK style?.

7.62x51 AIA's are set up to use modified M-14 style magazines, and so the magazine well is radically different to the 303 one.

Attached are a couple of pictures showing comparison between AIA M10B2 and No 4 Mk2 actions.

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[Sentryduty]

The nearest Lee Enfield equivalent would be the No 4 Mk2. There are not many parts in common.

Maxwell, thank you for the photos, there are a lot of things made plain with those. I didn't actually expect to see a side by side posted at all, much less, so quickly.

I can see where things are bigger, some others a tad bit simpler, to reduce machining I would imagine, it all makes a lot of sense.

---------- Post added at 08:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 AM ----------

As the designer, I NEVER intended to produce a "clone" / remake of a No4 as such, let alone some sort of L-42 "clone".

So perhaps I am better to understand the chicken and the egg of this rifle, this rifle was born of a specific need for a bolt-action design that chambered 7.62x39. Where Lee Enfield Rifles are common in AUS, it served as design "inspiration" for this new rifle, in a similar fashion how the military Mauser action inspired the modern Remington M700 series.

Is that somewhat correct?

If so, all of the design decisions make perfect sense, and the faults laid upon the rifle are principally based around manufacture quality not so much as the design aspect.