FN FAL help

[my82cam]

Long story short, a friend and i bought a FN FAL and a big box of parts for a great price. there is one complete gun and 2 complete lowers. there is 1 complete upper minues the receiver and also a brand new barrel. there were lots of other parts in there as well. my question is this, how much work or how expensive would it be to finish building the upper to put on one of the lowers? i have built a bunch of ar15s but i have never messed with any of these types weapons. thanks for any help or advice. oh, the upper has half of the receiver, it was cut through the mag well to be imported to America, i guess it used to be full auto.

[Caster]

Manufacturing: FAL Builds

[peejman]

It's not especially difficult if you have a few special tools and some mechanical aptitude. I'm in the process of building one right now. It's been a fun learning experience, though very slow due to lack of time to work on it. If you decide to have someone build it for you, make sure they have experience with the FAL. VOW is the only one I know of in TN.

The upper receiver (FFL part) can be had from several sources (Coonan, DSA, etc.) and will cost about $300.

922® compliance requires 7 US made parts, there's a long list of eligible parts. I used a furniture set ($100, 3 pcs), trigger assembly (H/T/S in FAL-speak, FCG in AR-speak... $65, 3 pcs), and the upper (Entreprise) which I needed anyway.

There are 2 key parts of building one....

1) Timing the barrel to the upper. Bare minimum, you need a receiver wrench ($50). Helpful things are a barrel vise ($50) and some sort of mechanism to help you achieve proper timing.

2) Headspacing. FAL's don't headspace like other rifles. You'd need headspace gauges ($44) and a set of gauge pins ($20). Once you determine proper headspace, you must get the correct size locking shoulder. Maybe you got lucky and there's a good one in your pile-o-parts. If not, they're about $30.

As for total cost... the typical "FrankenFAL" is worth about $650-$850 on the open market depending on condition. I'll have about $850 in building mine w/o refinishing it.

Here's an outline of building one, I'm using this as a guide. Building the FAL at Home, Background

Everything you never wanted to know can be found here: http://www.falfiles.com/forums/index.php

[my82cam]

may not be worth it, i was thinking if i could build one for 250ish i may do it. i'm not a big fan of the guns but thought i would give it a shot if the price was right. now i dunno lol

[peejman]

I feel sure you'd have no trouble selling the parts, do some research on Falfiles. I'm happy to help if you decide to build it.

What are the details of the complete rifle?

[my82cam]

i believe it is a complete FN FAL with a century receiver. i need to spend more time looking at it.

[Ramjo]

This is a very long, yet one of the most informative videos I have ever seen on a gun. This should give you more than enough to know all about your FAL.

is buddy John knows his stuff.