7.62 M1 Garand good or bad or what?

[lithgo]

ok so my dad bought this rifle back in the early 90's for about 400$ at a local gun shop. its 7.62 cal the wood is amazing so its most likely newer. its mostly Springfield parts i think. so what i would like to know is if any one can tell me a little more about it. like did the military
put it together or what and whats it worth (never planing to sell it never never) and should i keep shooting it or what?

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[browningautorifle]

I suspect because of the barrel marking it has an insert in the chamber. If so then some find that less desireable, because they say it might come out on firing. I did one like that and no matter what it wouldn't come out. I just changed a Danish barrel for a Criterion 7.62 and it worked perfectly right out of the shop. Other than headspacing and fitting the gas cylinder there was no extra work. I didn't change the rear sight and hit the gong second shot. Zero failures so far with 300 rds through it. Your gun look to have quite a mix of part (including that Win hammer somebody will want that) and that's not unusual. It looks like one of the military conversions and I would shoot the pi** out of it.

[gulliver62]

The barrel marking is consistent with standard 30-06 barrels from the 1950's. The receiver is 1944/45, the op rod is much later also.
The stock looks GI profile but I don't see any of the GI markings.
The markings are not consistent with anything I have seen or read about for a military conversion.
Everything I have read says that the Navy recalled all of the rifles they built with the bushing and changed to the true .308 barrels.
I don't know about a civilian mfg. of the insert but is certainly seems possible.

So, if I am guessing you have a late WWII gun that went through an arsenal rebuild and later went through a civilian conversion to .308. That's just my guess.

[Rick Cummelin]

Your rifle & when you bought it (early 90s) are consistent with the importation of many near-identical rifles back in the day. I would guess that thousands of them came in about the same time. Rumor at the time was that the 7.62 "conversion" & subsequent barrel marking was done in Pakistan. I have no idea if that rumor was true, but for sure they came in from somewhere on the other side of the world, and the workmanship was/is quite crude. It is NOT a conversion done by any branch of the U.S. military.

The price you paid was about average at the time, although prices varied considerably depending on condition. At one point, there were several of these at every gun show I attended, but eventually they dried up and disappeared.

Every one of those rifles had been reparkerized and all had non-original stocks in a variety of conditions, ranging from near-new to total garbage.

The 7.62 conversion was done with an insert in the chamber, which means there's some risk the insert could come out when firing. This risk might be low, as I have yet to hear of one coming out first-hand, but shooters avoid barrels with inserts.

[musketshooter]

With all the "blisters"on the receiver, it makes me wonder if it has been in a fire. A normal receiver would never be that rough.

[bd1]

Dealer's Warehouse brought those in from Pakistan early '90's. The receiver heel is a puzzle, beadblasted pits I'd guess.