-
Legacy Member
Century imported surplus L1A1 questions
Last edited by miner1436; 03-12-2015 at 08:05 PM.
-
-
03-12-2015 07:52 PM
# ADS
Friends and Sponsors
-
Legacy Member
Miner, I beleive the receivers were made be Imbel and are very high quality. The rifles were assembled in Canada by Cai when they had a facility there. These early CAI L1A1s marked "made in CAnada" seem to be well respected and sought after. Salt Flat
-
-
-
Legacy Member
Having had early one that had a Lithgow S/N from an NZ issue range and was mostly Lithgow bits I guessed it had been from a batch of surplused Kiwi rifle kits (minus the not US BATFE friendly receivers, etc.).
-
-
Legacy Member
Thanks for the info guys, though I was wondering more about the British rifles imported and sold as intact complete rifles.
-
-
Legacy Member
I doubt that complete rifles were imported into the US with the exception of the ones Lithgow made (early 1990s?) that had modified, US BATFE compliant receivers sans the safety sear slot.
BATFE ruled that the slotted receiver was easily converted to full auto and therefore not importable into the USA.
-
-
Legacy Member
There were some originals, sold to police depts/individual officers through century arms, British, Lithgow, and Indian 1A1 rifles were sold as such. These are the rifles I am trying to research the origins of, I suspect the same origins as these Imbel R1A1 rifles.
-
-
Legacy Member
Yes, there were. I distantly remember the ads in Shotgun News. Mostly British rifles with black plastic furniture, though I've seen pics of one or two made from Lithgow rifles bought by the British in the early 1970s. Easily identified because they have their original upper receivers (oops, "bodies") and barrels, which are marked with a tiny CAI import mark. Their legality is a bit "gray market" at best, because BATFE approved their import and sale to LEOs without the usual Class III classification or restrictions, and apparently with no restrictions on their resale by those LEOs.
Never heard of them being "cobbled together", though most of the ones I've seen were clearly put together with mismatched body/TMH serial numbers.
-