[Brother in Arms]

In regard to Magazines I had written a decent post about my observations but it got deleted by computer glitch.


M14 mags
At one time I had around 250 M14 magazines made by all the original contract makers in the 50 thru very early 70's All of these functioned flawlessly and most had been in service since Vietnam and were culled out in Iraq Mid 2000's. I also had 50 or so CMI contract magazines made in the original 1997 contract and a few newer ones. I only had one ever fail!!! The only one to fail was an extremely beat 97 contract magazine and the follower would go down and get stuck.

Metric FAL Mags
I have seen a number of these fail...and when I say a number probably 20-30 or more when I worked at Century arms...various countries but most were beat to hell. That being said there guns had receiver geometry problems so they may have worked in a decent gun. I would recommend avoiding Aluminum "parartrooper" FAL magazines except for collectible reasons.. Unless they were perfect and new they seemed to not work reliably and it was due to bending feed lips. I don't have any experience with 30 found Metric magazines.

Inch, Imperial magazines
I have never seen an inch magazine fail. They were heavier than Metric magazines and definitely had a sturdy locking tab brazed on the back, similar to the AK. I have even had good luck with the 30 round L2A1 magazines but seen failures with L4A1 7.62 NATO BREN magazines. These were meant to be gravity fed. They look cool in L1A1 but not reliable. That being said 20 or 30 round L1A1 magazines work fine in the L4A1 BREN.

G3A3 Magazines
I have never seen a Steel G3 magazine fail and to be fair most I have seen were in excellent shape. I have seen a couple of the aluminum magazines fail but these had seen abject abuse!!!! I would say that the aluminum magazines are just as good as the steel but maybe can't take quite the abuse the steel ones can. I haven't used any of the 30 round G3 magazines but they seem to be the same quality as the 20 round aluminum.

Conversely I have seen many steel CETME magazines not feed correctly and malfunction but again century had bad receivers on these guns so they might have worked in an original CETME.


Brother in Arms