I ordered 3 of the new receivers back when they were still 225$ prepaid. Today they are 290, compared to the FAL-Files DSA price of 350.
They arrived a week ago.
So this past week I sat down and built up 3 imbel kits on the Entreprise receivers. What a total pain in the ass. The finish is good, but required a lot of work.
Out of the three only one was able to hand time correctly. And yes tried all the barrels I have (5) in the ones that didn't. Best I could get was 9'oclock on one of them.
The other was 10. But the one at 10 I couldn't even screw the barrel in more then have way. So I applied some lapping compound to the threads and kept working the barrel in and out until it was seated.
Since I don't have a lathe I took a block of oak and drilled a hole in it just barely large enough so the threaded portion of the barrel would sit on it.
I then used some spray adhesive to attach a piece of sand paper to the block, cut out a hole in the sand paper. Couple squirts of oil. Drop the barrel in and twist. Kinda looked like I was trying to start a fire. I started with 220 wet dry and moved up to 400. Took forever on the one to get the shoulder set back.
I had to do the lapping compound trick on one of the gas tube threads also.
On one of the receivers the locking shoulder hole wasn't perfectly formed. A lot of metal from the ejector block had been pushed up into the shoulder hole and they never removed it. It looked like the EB slot was too small and they had to really push the block in, moving metal in the process. Some time spent with a small round file fixed it.
Now the worse thing was the mag wells. On all three receivers they were too small. More so in the width then the length. They would cut metal off the magazines as you tried to insert it, they were so tight.
Took a lot of work with the Dremal, but finally got them so that a mag could easily be insert and would drop clear when the mag release was pressed.
No problems with fit to the lower, bolt rails, or top cover.
But as it was took almost 8 hours work to get three of them barrelled, timed, headspaced, and the mag wells fixed.
I am all for saving some cash, but Entreprises time to deliver isn't any quicker then DSA's, maybe ever a little longer.
They charge your CC at the time of order, not time of shipping (DSA does ToS)
And then the amount of time required to get them working.
Not worth it IMHO.
I won't be ordering any more.
To date I have built 1 Hesse, 2 Centuriers, 3 Imbels, and 1 DSA. I probably was able to get all 7 of those rifles up and running in less time then one Entreprise.
To be fair, I did not contact them to complain. By the time I discovered the magwell problem, all three had already been worked on in some small manner.
The serial numbers were 30 numbers apart from the lowest to the highest if that matters.
Pete
