Century imported surplus L1A1 questions

[miner1436]

Hello gents, I was wondering if anybody had any information on the century arms imported surplus British L1A1's from the early 90's. I believe these were imported through Canada, and were cobbled together from a wide variety of mis-matching parts. Anybody know if these were imported directly out of the UK, or was it some other country?

Here is an example of the ones I am talking about, 2nd rifle in the row:
Milsurps Knowledge Library - FN 1A1 vs. FN L1A1 vs. FN C1A1

Thanks!

Information

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[Salt Flat]

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

[Paul S.]

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.).

[miner1436]

Thanks for the info guys, though I was wondering more about the British rifles imported and sold as intact complete rifles.

[Paul S.]

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.

[miner1436]

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.

[enbloc8]

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.