Malay contract L2A1

[mrclark303]

Morning all,

I hope all our UK members have escaped the rolling storms undamaged .. !

I headed on up to the Birmingham International Arms fair last Sunday and finally had the opportunity to say hello to our very own Roger Payne, always nice to put a face to a name.

My main mission of the day was to acquire another SLR for the collection, this time an old spec deactivated Lithgow L2A1, all matching numbers, really nice example and a piece that's been missing from my Inch pattern Fal collection for a long while.

This one is 1964 dated and Malaya contract ... interesting piece, it is currently fitted with an incorrect British three slot Flash Eliminator instead of the Tactical Trumpet these contract L2's were famous for.

That spiked my interest, so I looked a bit closer at this piece, it seems I have an example pre 1988 section 1 fun hardware!

Over on another forum, a few of us have been fondly reminiscing about Pat walker, an RFD based in Gateshead in the 1980's. He was well know for his conversions of full auto firearms to Sec1 in the "have what you want" pre 1988 happy days here in the UK.

Now Pat and his team did a proper job of the conversions, but others took a far more relaxed approach!

Well this L2A1 is clearly a product of those long gone happy times (not one of Pats conversions), close study revealed London proof House 1982 marks and a section 1 modification .... a pin had been placed to stop the fire lever being rotated round to the rock and roll indent ...

Yep, a full Auto light machine gun and all that was altered to render it semi auto was the addition of a TMH mounted steel pin!

It seems insane today, but back then in the UK, a more relaxed approach was taken, the steel "stop pin" was not uncommon!

Then came murderous nut job Michael Ryan, and all the good wholesome fun stuff was swept away with the stroke of a pen!

If it was me, I would have cut the tip from the safety sear, machined the bolt carrier tripping extension away and replaced the fire selector and trigger plunger with the semi only units from the L1A1.

I was going to replace the FE during restoration, but I think I will retain it now as its part of this L2A1's history and a reminder of long gone happy times for us UK shooters!

I will post pics when shes ready for display..

Cheers all, John.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Peter Laidler]

Not sure that I'd have cut the tip off the safety sear........ Think about it! Incidentally, it's not a 'safety sear' as such but an automatic sear

[mrclark303]

Well, here she is, restored and ready for display alongside one of my L1A1's for comparison.

[Peter Laidler]

I'm sure that ours had a backsight on the cover......... Or were the Malay Police ones different to our Army ones?

[mrclark303]

Hi Peter, I think the Singapore and Malaya contract examples had the L1 backsight, I would love a backsight top cover and blanking wedge for mine, but they seem to be quite rare and very expensive indeed!

[Peter Laidler]

Although we had L2's in the Battalions they weren't that popular as LMG's because the regular cadre NCO's had been brought up on Brens - which the L2 definately wasn't. Additionally, those Regular and Nasho crunchies that had been to Malaya (and were distributed into the 'new' battalions) had been equipped with L4 Brens to boot. They certainly knew how to split gas cylinders!!!!! The chrome pistons and gas plugs on Aust L1's and 2's seemed better/harder than the UK ones

Maybe Muffer or Bruce can say when the L2's were phased out.

[Aussie48]

The Unit I was with at the time had them withdrawn in 1986

[nzl1a1collector]

Here's an ex Singapore L2A1 rifle as it came from the Factory in 1970.





The standard L1A1 type sighting arrangement was preferred because there was little point in having a 1000m backsight in the thick bush/jungle. The Recoil Reducer was also a standard feature on the Malaya contract L2A1 rifles right from the start.

[mrclark303]

Very nice example Kevin, is it part of your superb collection?

[nzl1a1collector]

Its one of 6 that were imported into New Zealand back in the mid 80's. Now there are only 5 in this configuration as someone thought it would be better to remove the ugly recoil reducer and replace it with the standard L1A1 flash eliminator. Mind you I can't blame them, at the time you couldn't get standard L2A1 rifles, they were still in service.