On February 15, I dropped my Romanian WASR AK-47 off at an FFL dealer for transfer to Century Arms for examination and possible repair. The darned thing had been firing in semi-auto and in burst fire and or full auto. I hoped they would find the problem and repair it free of charge even though I bought it last Spring and only notified them of the problem last month. After calling them they said 'send it in through and FFL dealer licensee'. I called them about a week or so ago and they told me they had it and it would not be before about March 21 before they got it sent back to me. I had a nice surprise today when the FFL licensee, Volko Supply of Garden City Park, NY, called me to say they had received it back and I could pick it up. I picked it up from them this afternoon and have to give them a hat tip for being pleasant to deal with and for getting their part of the job, the FFL transfer and arranging shipping with UPS, done right and at a reasonable FFL transfer fee. Very nice people, I dealt mainly with Victor!
It seems that at Century Arms, they did some repairs to my AK and luckily the repairs were free of charge. I guess they handled it as a warranty repair. According to a sheet in the box with the AK, they changed the trigger, the sear and the gas piston too. What seemed significant to me about the things they changed, other than that the trigger and sear were probably causing it to go into burst and auto fire mode, was that they changed components from two very different areas of the rifle. In other words, it seems they did not go to only the most likely culprit as the cause of the malfunction (the trigger group), find a problem there, fix that and then assume all else was okay. They evidently checked out the rest of the rifle before sending it back and found what I am guessing was another unrelated problem and fixed it too. Thus, they checked the gas piston and replaced it for whatever reason. I do not think that if the trigger and sear were the problem that the gas piston also would have been involved in that same problem (but then again I am no gunschmid). When I think of it, I do not recall that there was anything that appeared wrong with the gas piston when I cleaned the AK awile back. If if there was something wrong - well, I am glad they apparently took the extra time and effort to check out the whole gun and repair or replace whatever needed fixing or replacement. That was a nice touch. After that, they test fired it by running 30 rounds through it. They also, according to the info sheet, cleaned it and polished it among other things.
I have not had the chance to take it to the range. That may be awhile but I am hoping to get the chance this weekend. I guess a range trip or three with it should indicate if the problem has been solved.
I am pretty impressed that it took less than a month for the total turnaround from the day I sent it out until picking it up today. In all that was the better part of 27 days total but only 18 days if you exclude weekends and the one holiday that fell in that time frame. Take off shipping time, at least a day or two each way, and that makes it either 14 or 16 days. That really is not too shabby considering that they thought they would only get it back to me around March 21st. If they got it fixed properly then I will definitely have to give the folks at Century Arms a call to thank them not only for fixing it but for getting it done pretty quickly too.
All he best,
Glenn B
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