Rock and Roll with an L1A1..............

[Will M]

Yes, the safety sear holds the hammer until it is tripped by the carrier, the sear being out of the way in full auto mode. Without the safety sear, the hammer would ride forward as the breech bloch & carrier moves forward, maybe or maybe not firing the rifle. ( could fire before the breech block is locked) and we have an excessive headspace problem! The heavier barrel and bipod of the C2 helps control full auto by a bit.

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[jmoore]

About the only 7.62x51 rifle I like less in auto mode is the G3.

Not from anything functionally, its just hard to achieve hits!

Of course, the M14's our group have used got some control enhancements; the pistol grip from an AK mounted on the fore end of Forsyth County's ex-GEMA M14 is particularly useful, as is the Smith Enterprises muzzle brake.

[shoot!!!]

Owning FN's I can't shoot,, I have seen a guy with an Ishapore, put a little lever in the side, no detent so he guessed, and it worked FA. Did they not have the safety requirements to avoid this? He flicked it back and semi,, I thought it was neat!!

[L1A1_Dude]

There have been a few myths about converting an issue L1A1 rifle to the select fire role. It wasn't THAT simple for the average soldier to make the L1 series of rifle fire automatic, believe me

Hi everyone, I just had to register to answer this particular post alas simultaneously necroposting like hell. Please bear with me. English isn't my first tongue, so caveat collēga and please bear with me again

Please, save the legal BS, we all should be adults and we all reap what we sow.

I've owned an Australian Singapore contract Lithtgow built L1A1 since the early 90's and I've been flirting with the idea of converting the thing into full auto rifle. Why? Just for the heck of it.

Believe me, it is mindbogglinly easy.

First you have to shorten the pin behind the trigger about .2" or 4mm(ish), so that the pin will not protrude into the hole in which the pistol grip screw goes into. It isn't hardened into titaniounish qualities, not even drill bit hard. It's just your everyday mildly hardened steel which can be even manually filed with almost no effort. I used a belt grinder for accuracy and comfort (I'm a lazy bastard), but your everyday file will do the job if you have five to fifteen minutes to spare given your will to apply some elbow grease.

Second: pull out the safety lever. I don't know what kind of a rifle Mr. Laidler was referring to, but all I had to do with my Aussie was to fold the rifle open, turn the safety lever counter clockwise and pull it out. No pins, no pliers, no tiny screwdrivers, just turn and pull the bugger out.

After this, without the safety lever the rifle is full auto and full auto only, the auto sear taking care of dropping the hammer at an appropriate time until you release the trigger. Did this test today, test-fired and know for sure this works. Had to test it several times to be sure. And again. And again. You get the picture... To make the rifle semi-auto, just put the safety lever back and everything is back to normal. Nobody knows what you've done but you. And your 759 friends in the social media you just bragged about your genius to

If you want to retrofit your safety into a selector, all you have to do is file off the excess metal preventing full rotation and maybe file some material off your overly lengthy trigger pin (I had to do this) to allow selector movement into the "A" position and file some material off the safety to give the trigger room to move into fire position at full auto setting (you'll figure it out now when you know how far the trigger has to move).

But really, to go full auto with an original L1A1 all you have to do is remove the safety lever and shorten the pin. That's it.

All the average soldier had to do was: get a flat-head screwdriver and a file. There's no myth, this is the reality, I did it and it works.

[tankhunter]

I covered this in depth, in a Previous post.

And have to add, we do not advocate any Illegal actions by Forum Members.

If you want to risk a 'Holiday' for a few years. Then that is a matter for the person concerned.

If something had gone wrong, & the weapon exploded of there had been an incident. Involving others. You might not have had time to quickly 'Convert' the Rifle back to it's legal condition! If it had been seized because of an 'Incident' of whatever kind. It WOULD have undoubtably been inspected by a Police Expert. & you would reap the ensuing penalties.

With everything we do, there is a certain area of the unknown. IE: You can never truly predict when something MIGHT go wrong!...................

it REALLY isn't worth the risk Buddy.

What I posted was for Theory, & IN SERVICE EXPIRIENCE during my Own time in the Military.
If you do what you have described as a Civilian. Without the appropriate licence or Authority. You may well find yourself, 'In difficulties'!.....................

[L1A1_Dude]

Thank you for your input sir, but please don't act like a finger waving dick, that is extremely impolite. You might have noticed that I asked:

Please, save the legal BS, we all should be adults and we all reap what we sow.

This is because you don't know who, what, under what authority and where I am and it isn't even your business to know. Therefore please let me asses the local legal aspects with the local authorities and worthiness of the physical risk: we are both adults in an obviously different surrounding and neither of us is the other-one's mother. No animals or human beings are put in a risk of death or injury during these practical tests. The motive for these tests is to investigate ways to increase militia and/or military firepower during extraordinary circumstances during which military based logistics has become challenging.

Trust me, I know what I'm doing with my own background (military and civilian) , but then again: even that isn't yours to worry, let alone preach about. One extremely important thing I've learned during these years with heavy crew served and light individual weapons: they don't just explode if you let the weapon do what it is designed to do and feed them proper ammunition. This "explodophobia" is utterly absurd and only serves the purpose of frightening people so they wouldn't try to reconvert semi-auto converted designed to be full-auto weapons back to their originally engineered form.

This first hand clinical, not theory based, information is meant for educational purposes for those who appreciate practical hands-on study based information, each of whom should use his or her own judgement what to do with the acquired knowledge.

Please, lighten up sir and loosen your collar a few notches.

[Peter Laidler]

Well, that's the pontification of a true expert who's told us mere enthusiastic amateurs then! I wish you were here a couple of years earlier as it'd have saved a load of time and effort all round. Or around in the 60's when we were learning the mechanical in's and out's of this kit to an intimate level

As for not knowing where you are, then you are being naive. Now everyone in Scandinavia knows where you're from. Finland!

[L1A1_Dude]

Extremely suave move Sir misusing your administrative forum privileges: you don't seem to care about privacy in here, let this be noted. I didn't comment on anyone's expertise per se, but I did find Mr. tankhunter's attitude patronizing at the least.

If you were offended by my trial based post I'm sorry for your bad feelings, but maybe, just maybe it's time to man up and act like an adult and tell which technical detail you don't agree with instead of pointless bickering.

I didn't agree on full-auto conversion being a difficult task, now that I've tried it it I know you don't need any special tools or skills. The question of whether a soldier would or would not do this in the field wasn't in my interest, just the amount of tooling and skill required and these requirements proved to be minimal.

[mrclark303]

Oh god, not another one, as Peter and Tankie clearly have nothing to teach an "expert" like you, move along please and close the door on the way out.

[L1A1_Dude]

I'm quite keen on learning more, but all I get is smug comments. Way to go mates Am I missing something, or is there a secret rule like "thou shalt not speak your mind if it isn't in accord with Peter and Tankie"?

I have read quite a lot of threads in which these two men show their expertise, but it doesn't make them God like absolutes: we all learn new things, even they do.