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JRA RPK Carbine

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  • Red

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    Hi guys. I am sure most AK lovers have seen my posting of my JRA RPK Carbine for sale. This little review is not to pump up the sale or anything but simply to share my experience with the rifle and build quality of JRA.

    So I kinda ordered this rifle on impule. The way it is built is like a heavy duty VEPR. It has a bulged trunnion and a super heavy finned barrel. It is an American made barrel from what I read and is not a chopped down version from the full RPK version. It is an actual cut to length carbine barrel yet it retains the heavy barrel profie and fins. I do not believe there is a way to mount an OEM Yugo bipod on her without removing additional barrel material.

    Out of the box the JRAs final QC and fit are awful. Either they do not have a QC dept or maybe it was Friday when my rifle was built I do not know but it was pretty shabby in the details.

    The selector lever would fly north of safe. It would not discharge the gun but it would not fit into the top cover initially like it should have.

    The front sight post even though it was protected by the rabbit ears was bent. No kidding, the front sight post was bent to one side. It was easy enough to straighten out with a couple of hand tools but should never have left JRAs shop like that.

    The rear windage adjustable sight was adjusted all the way to one side as well. It should have left the factory centered and on the shooter to adjust zero to his/her cheek weld. Again not a big deal but details.

    Actiion felt like it was cycling on train tracks. It would do the classic hang up to the rear and was just super bumpy due to the US made FCG thrown in there with minimal fitting and no final polishing and fitting.

    Other than that the rifle is laster stright and super heavy. I have fired less than 100 rounds thru her but have tried her out with both the chinese style break and regular thread protector and there is honestly not much of a difference. This tells me that the rifle is heavy enough that the recoil felt is going to be felt no matter the muzzle device. That said the recoil was super light considering the caliber and with the built in rubber butt pad it felt like shooting a 9mm carbine or less.

    All that said, I spent quite a few hours in polishing and final fitting the metal parts the way they shoud have been to begin with. The rifle is definately better now than when it left the factory, however I feel at the price point I paid for it, I should not have had to do any of the work I did on it.

    The action is now like glass. It cycles like a well broken in milled receiver AK. selector no longer goes past the safe positioni regardless or drill being performed and pressure placed on it. It is also tuned to be able to disengage with enough pressure to be fast but not loose.

    Other than the final details, JRA did a great job IMO of putting together this rifle. The rivet work looked good, it came with a FCG bracket standard instead of the paper clip which was a nice surprise. It is a non matching Yugo surplus ex RPK parts kit so you can see some where and tear on some of the parts due to it being subjected to automatic fire, however JRA did a good job of refinishing or discarding out of spec parts it seems.

    This rifle is heavy, and I mean heavy. shouldering and firing this rifle will no doubt wear you out. It is not your typical AKM with a light profile barrel and components. It is a full on M72 RPK just with a shorter barrel which I though was really cool.

    Again the only reason I am selling it is because it was kinda an impulse buy and there are other things I would rather buy. Just my thoughts on this particular AK varient offering.

    Thanks all.
     

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