ok guys I know some of you hgave been waiting for a review of these receivers now since they were introduced so here is my fair and balanced review.
ok my receiver arrived at my FFL on thursday morning I went and picked it up and immediately took some prelimanary observations on several key points which I will cover in sections.
#1) DIMENTIONAL QUALITY:
ok at first I was a tad dissapointed with the bottom of the receiver since it was sowbellied or bowed in the middle a tad.
as you can see it's not real bad but you know it's there. It dosen't affect function at all but for the money I would have hoped for a more flat surface.
Ok now the other thing I saw was the receiver itself was twisted just a very small liitle bit. as in the other problem I stated before this really dosent effect function at all and once everything iss assembled it seemed to have straitened itself out. The top cover fit nice and I needed no tweaking to get it to snap on after I built this up as I did on all my other builds.
also I was a little bothered by the fitment of the trunion in the receiver.
as you see in the pic it didn't exactly fit like a glove but once I put it in a vic I was able to squeeze fit it relatively flat and once riveted it wasn't noticeable.
#2) RAILS
the rails on this receiver are done nicely and are pre heat treated and are also angled fairly strait and the bolt slid on them perfectly like glass.
at first when I looked at the from the end I was worried that they may have been under bent when manufatured but after I looked at a few other receivers I had they all differed between one another so I figured this was a non issue as well. the bolt cycled flawlessly after assembly.
#3)HOLE PLCEMENT
Alright this is where I found the worst flaws in this receiver and they are not that bad either.
The holes for the trigger pin on this receiver were uneven due to what I belive is from the receiver not being alligned 100% when it was bent.
you can see from the pictures below how one side was a right on and the left side was almost in the radius of the bend itself.
now this did cause me some problems, not with trigger geometry so much as if you want to use the sheppards crook to hold the pin in place you are outta luck. I will end up having to use either E clips or a red star arms or tapco pin plate as the hole location on the left is so low that the sheppards crook wire won't fit under the the pin.
this again is not a huge problem but if all these receivers are like this then it will cost you around $12 extra to build off of them, unless you don't mind holding the pin in with your left thumb while shooting like I did when I test fired it.
#4) ENGRAVING
what I really liked is how compact the engraving was on the bottom of the receiver. it was also nicely and neatly done leaving a very professional look to the receiver. Also it is placed on the forward front and you don't notice it unless you go looking for it. the selector markings are nice as well using the correct romainian markings and are fairly deep allowing the receivers to be painted without covering them up or obscuring them completely.
#5) BUILDABILITY
this is the most important part to me. Is this receiver easy to build on? YES
this is a great receiver and very strong. I didn't have do any tweaking to get this receiver to go together at all. I would have to say even with the little nit picking flaws I found that this build went together better than any of my other builds using other brand receivers.
at times I had to chuck the receiver in the vice to reinstall the barrel and to put the barrel pin in and to swag the barrel strait once and the only thing that hapened was the receiver got a small scratch and one small ding from my hammer. needless to say I was impressed with it's structural intgrity.
this receiver is one tough S.O.B. !
my final anyalasis is this:
the Greenlight Arms receiver is the only game in town right now so saying it is the best would be dumb. but if asked would I recommend it to other builders, I would not hesitate to say yes, as this receiver is a good quality receiver.
I would also have to say that a first time builder would have no problems building off of this either.
I would like to add however that these flaws I mentioned in the review will need to be addressed in order to be a perfect receiver.
nothing I found with the exception of the trigger pin mis allignment will have any effect on building or fuction of your RPK but honestly, I think for the price that these things should be fixed.
On a scale of 1-10 I give the Greenlight Arms RPK receiver a solid 8
if the things I mentioned earlier are fixed in the next batch or if the Yugo receiver I have comming is not like this I would have to raise the score to a 10.
here is my finished build using this receiver:
Greenlight Arms RPK receiver review
Linear Mode
