Well the conversion isn’t going well. The gas assembly wont fit over the rear of the barrel as I mentioned in post 2. My original plan was to cut down the barrel to the width of the gas assembly unit. As it turned out the outer barrel is metal and it would have taken ages with the tools at my disposable. With a lathe, it would have been simple.

Plan 2 was to then file down the inside of the gas assembly chamber. This I did. I’ve taken it down as far as possible before I think it’s got to thin. And that’s still to small to fit on the barrel. At this stage I was willing to give up until I could find someone with a lathe that could have cut the barrel down for me which is a shame because I now have most of the parts.

Luckily, I was helped out on the Red Alliance forums by a member who was selling various RPK bits and one of these was a full length barrel which I promptly bought. This barrel also has the benefits of having the cleaning rod and the retaining caps for the furniture and cleaning rod on so it’ll look better. All I have to do now is wait for that to arrive from the US.

As I mentioned, most of the parts are now ordered and arrived. I have the wire to rewire the Dragunov to have the battery in the stock. I ordered on Monday from Overlander and I got the wire the next day! Top service chaps!

As for the battery, I bought a second hand, barely used, 9.6v battery from Warrior on ASCUK. Again, I bought that on Sunday evening and it arrived on Tuesday. In the RPK, it has to have a custom battery to fit it. A standard large battery like that which an AK uses wont fit. It’s just to long. Even an 8.4v wont fit. A small battery can fit but you wont have the capacity. Luckily after some measuring by me and Warrior, we found that the PEQ box battery I bought can just fit in. Like it was especially for it. PEQ boxes are those horrible thing on the front of Armalites that look terrible but at least the batteries can fit the RPK stock! So now I have a 1700mA 9.6v battery that fits.

I placed my order with RSOV on Monday as well. RSOV is quite busy and they’re only processing my order today according to there website. I believe it’s run by one chap and maybe a couple of workers but I’ve heard good things so I’m not to worried.

I bought an AK74 metal body for the gun. I’ll just whip off the current plastic TM AK47 body I put on to test if I could do it and it all fit and whack on the AK74 metal body. I also ordered a AK74 plastic pistol grip. This will make the RPK look more like an RPK74 than if I was to use the wooden grip that the RPK kit came with. And because I felt like trying something else, I bought some cheap Dboys hi cap mags. These are double stack type mags and can carry a hefty 1000 rounds each! For £9 for 2, I thought they were worth trying out, even if they turn out to be terrible. I’ll do a review on just them when I get them.

My list of stuff so far I’ve bought is:-