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Zastava O-PAP Review
Overview: Just thought I might give everyone here that may be interested in buying an AK 47 variant some info on my latest purchase. The gun is a Zastava (Serbian) M70 O-PAP that I have had now for about 3 months.
Many of you are well versed on the Yugo M70 series rifles, but I am writing the following info basically for the folks here that don't know much about the gun, and may be thinking about purchasing one in the future.
As most of you know, this rifle is imported by Century Arms, and then made 922r compliant by them. The US parts used in this gun are the 'Tapco' G2 fire control group, gas piston, pistol grip and the slant-cut muzzle brake ... That's it. Century Arms actually did very little work to this gun. Everything else is manufactured and assembled by the Zastava Arms factory in Serbia.
Be advised that this is a fairly heavy gun do to the thick 1.5mm stamped steel reciever fitted with a 'bulged' front trunnion (ala RPK) and the heavy barrel. Also, as most of you already know, this gun comes with a true double-stack bolt.
BTW, I took my O-PAP to the local UPS Store and had them weigh it on there shipping scale. Without the magazine, the gun by itself weighs exactly 8 lb - 15 oz.
Some people complain about sloppy fitting magazines in many of the various import AKs, but I can say that both the 30 round steel magaizines that were included with my O-PAP fit tight with very very little side to side sloppyness. So, any grinding that was done on the mouth of the reciever in order for it to accept double-stack magazines was at least done correctly. There was no 'Hack-Job' done to the reciever on this particular gun.
Overall, this is a very solid gun and appears to be well made. For it's price, Zastava did not go 'cheap' on the gun as far as I can tell. It would have been nice had Zastava hard-chromed the barrel bore, but there really is so very little corrosive ammo available for sale anymore, and the fact that this gun does not shoot in full auto mode, I think it's now a non-issue. I guess what money they saved on chrome, they spent manufacturing a barrel that has a heavier wall thickness than many of the other imported AKs out there. The 16.3" cold hammer-forged barrel resembles a shortened version of the heavy RPK barrel ... There is absolutly nothing at all wrong with the O-PAP barrel.
The one concern I have with these Yugo M70s is that so many of the parts on the gun are 'non-standard' from the rest of the various AK47 / AKMs produced by other countries. This somewhat limits the availability of many aftermarket parts. Even finding certain OEM replacement parts for the M70 may be somewhat difficult, depending on what your looking for. Obviously, Serbia has made some changes to the basic Russian AKM design in order to meet there countries unique requirements in the field. Anyway, most of these design changes certanly made for a very stout gun.
What is a little odd to me is the lack of a bayonet lug on this gun. Personally, I have no use for a mounted bayonet, but I still would like the gun to have the lug. Anyway, the lack of this lug is no reason not to buy the gun as far as I am concerned ... just a slight disappointment, I guess.
Front Sight: After a full clean up and lube of the gun, I took it to the range. The first thing I noticed was that even though the front sight did not visually appear to be canted, it obviously was canted slightly to the left because the front sight post needed to be set quite a bit off to the right of center in order to zero the gun at 50 yards. A couple of hard smacks to the front sight using a block of wood and a heavy hammer moved the sight base far enough over to the right in order to now have a centered front sight post when the gun is zero'd. I really did not need to correct the slight cant, but I did not like the front sight post offset to the right like it was before. Anyway, that certainly was a cheap and easy fix!
Rear Sight This is not a problem associated with just the Zastava M70 series rifles, but a problem with just about all these AK47 / AKMs. If you look at the sighting groove cut into the rear iron sight leaf, you will notice that it's very very narrow. So narrow that it is very difficult to aquire the front to rear sight picture on the target with any speed at all. I have noticed that a company called 'Rifle Dynamics' sells a rear sight leaf called the "Fuller AK Rear Sight Mod" for $90. Well, I am thinking I can just cut the notch in my OEM rear sight leaf a little wider and save some money. And that is exactly what I did with a Dremel tool. Now the sight picture is very much improved ... Another cheap fix.
Hammer: The next thing I noticed was that when cycling the charging handle slowly back and forth, the bolt carrier would hang about 3/4 of the way to the rear. The cure for this was to smooth out the 2 ridges on the Tapco G2 hammer that slides across the bolt when the gun is cycled. After re-contouring just those 2 bumps in the hammer and polishing it to a very smooth / slick finish, the bolt carrier now slides very smoothly with no binding. The gun still feeds perfectly with no malfuctions ... Another cheap fix.
Pin Retainer Spring: The next item I had problems with was the hammer and trigger pin retainer spring. It's a pain in the ass to install, and I obviously didn't ever get it in correctly because I still had problems with the trigger pin working it's way out of the reciever after firing the gun. The fix was to replace the spring with a 'Power Custom' brand pin retainer plate. If you ever remove your fire control group, this is the best 8 bucks you will ever spend. BTW, a Tapco pin retainer plate that I originally bought did not fit my O-PAP. The Power Custom fit perfectly with no modification.
Pistol Grip: Next item replaced was the US made pistol grip that Century Arms installs on the O-PAP. I just didn't like it, so I bought a US made 'Arsenal' (AK-212B) black polymer grip from K-VAR to replace it with.
The only modification needed on this grip was to drill out the very end of the mount hole slightly because the head of the OEM mount bolt was just a little too large in diameter for the hole in the Arsenal grip. This took about 1 minute with a drill to fix, and now the new pistol grip fits perfectly, and looks like it has never been modified.
Side Optics Mount: The unusual SVD style side mount rail installed on these Yugo's was the next problem. This rail really limits you as to what aftermarket optics mount you can attach to it ... Here is the easy fix to this problem. This little modification made to any of your standard aftermarket AK optics mounts allows you to use the mount on the non-standard O-PAP side rail. http://www.akfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1723652#post1723652 (see post #2).
I used a 'Midwest Industries' MI-AK30SM scope mount which fit perfectly after the simple modification. This Midwest mount I installed includes standard sized built-in 30mm scope attachment rings, so there is nothing else to buy but the scope itself. The Midwest mount clamps on very tight to the O-PAPs rail now, so the scope holds zero without a problem. I included to this post a couple of photos of the Midwest mount and the Weaver scope mounted on the O-PAP.
Scope: The next item to address was the installation of a scope. Due to my my old eyes, I really have a problem hitting a 100 yard target using the iron sights. I thought about installing a Red-Dot on the gun, but these don't usually have any magnification, so in my case, I still cant see a small target at 100-150 yards with the Red-Dot very well. So, installing an adjustable 1-4x / 24mm Weaver 'Kaspa' scope seemed to be the ticket for me. This Weaver is not an expensive scope, but it works great and provides up to a 4x magnification (for me, this is perfect for targets out to about 150 yards). Anyway, due to the balistics of the 7.62x39 round, out past 200 yards, the bullet starts dropping like a rock, so I am not looking to aquire targets further out than 150-200 yards with any of these style guns anyway.
Furniture Refinishing: Last was the wood furniture on this O-PAP. The wood is solid (not plywood), but it is not finished from the factory. I guess the word "Raw" would be a good term for it. Although there was no damage at all to the wood on my gun, it was just real rough as far as I was concerned. I know some folks here want to retain the look of the furniture as it came from the factory, and that's perfectly fine. In my case, I just wanted the wood to look more 'finished'. Plus, I like 'tinkering' with <deleted>, so I obviously couldn't keep my hands off the furniture of this new gun.
The finish I used was 'Minwax' oil base stain and 'Minwax' semi-gloss clear polyurathane in a rattle-can spray. With proper sanding, then staining, and then 5 wet coats of spray polyurathane followed with a final 800 wet-sanding and polishing, the finish turned out real nice as far as I am concerned. The one big advantage of polyurathane is that it becomes a very hard durable finish. How long will it hold up? ... we shall see.
NOTE: Recently I replaced the wood stock with a DPH fixed skeleton stock. The adapter block used to mount this stock was provided by Krebs.
Price: For the price of $560 that I paid for this gun, I can honestly say that I am real happy with it. It is a great running gun with no bad habits or surprises ... however, did I say it's heavy
___________________________________________
I just want to be clear here. This gun shot perfectly well straight out of the box. All the little mods I did on this gun was just to make it a little better for me. And if your anything like me; You just can't keep your busy little fingers off something mechanical anyway. I guess I just like modifying stuff like this gun as much as I like going to the range and shooting it ... such as life
Overview: Just thought I might give everyone here that may be interested in buying an AK 47 variant some info on my latest purchase. The gun is a Zastava (Serbian) M70 O-PAP that I have had now for about 3 months.
Many of you are well versed on the Yugo M70 series rifles, but I am writing the following info basically for the folks here that don't know much about the gun, and may be thinking about purchasing one in the future.
As most of you know, this rifle is imported by Century Arms, and then made 922r compliant by them. The US parts used in this gun are the 'Tapco' G2 fire control group, gas piston, pistol grip and the slant-cut muzzle brake ... That's it. Century Arms actually did very little work to this gun. Everything else is manufactured and assembled by the Zastava Arms factory in Serbia.
Be advised that this is a fairly heavy gun do to the thick 1.5mm stamped steel reciever fitted with a 'bulged' front trunnion (ala RPK) and the heavy barrel. Also, as most of you already know, this gun comes with a true double-stack bolt.
BTW, I took my O-PAP to the local UPS Store and had them weigh it on there shipping scale. Without the magazine, the gun by itself weighs exactly 8 lb - 15 oz.
Some people complain about sloppy fitting magazines in many of the various import AKs, but I can say that both the 30 round steel magaizines that were included with my O-PAP fit tight with very very little side to side sloppyness. So, any grinding that was done on the mouth of the reciever in order for it to accept double-stack magazines was at least done correctly. There was no 'Hack-Job' done to the reciever on this particular gun.
Overall, this is a very solid gun and appears to be well made. For it's price, Zastava did not go 'cheap' on the gun as far as I can tell. It would have been nice had Zastava hard-chromed the barrel bore, but there really is so very little corrosive ammo available for sale anymore, and the fact that this gun does not shoot in full auto mode, I think it's now a non-issue. I guess what money they saved on chrome, they spent manufacturing a barrel that has a heavier wall thickness than many of the other imported AKs out there. The 16.3" cold hammer-forged barrel resembles a shortened version of the heavy RPK barrel ... There is absolutly nothing at all wrong with the O-PAP barrel.
The one concern I have with these Yugo M70s is that so many of the parts on the gun are 'non-standard' from the rest of the various AK47 / AKMs produced by other countries. This somewhat limits the availability of many aftermarket parts. Even finding certain OEM replacement parts for the M70 may be somewhat difficult, depending on what your looking for. Obviously, Serbia has made some changes to the basic Russian AKM design in order to meet there countries unique requirements in the field. Anyway, most of these design changes certanly made for a very stout gun.
What is a little odd to me is the lack of a bayonet lug on this gun. Personally, I have no use for a mounted bayonet, but I still would like the gun to have the lug. Anyway, the lack of this lug is no reason not to buy the gun as far as I am concerned ... just a slight disappointment, I guess.
Front Sight: After a full clean up and lube of the gun, I took it to the range. The first thing I noticed was that even though the front sight did not visually appear to be canted, it obviously was canted slightly to the left because the front sight post needed to be set quite a bit off to the right of center in order to zero the gun at 50 yards. A couple of hard smacks to the front sight using a block of wood and a heavy hammer moved the sight base far enough over to the right in order to now have a centered front sight post when the gun is zero'd. I really did not need to correct the slight cant, but I did not like the front sight post offset to the right like it was before. Anyway, that certainly was a cheap and easy fix!
Rear Sight This is not a problem associated with just the Zastava M70 series rifles, but a problem with just about all these AK47 / AKMs. If you look at the sighting groove cut into the rear iron sight leaf, you will notice that it's very very narrow. So narrow that it is very difficult to aquire the front to rear sight picture on the target with any speed at all. I have noticed that a company called 'Rifle Dynamics' sells a rear sight leaf called the "Fuller AK Rear Sight Mod" for $90. Well, I am thinking I can just cut the notch in my OEM rear sight leaf a little wider and save some money. And that is exactly what I did with a Dremel tool. Now the sight picture is very much improved ... Another cheap fix.
Hammer: The next thing I noticed was that when cycling the charging handle slowly back and forth, the bolt carrier would hang about 3/4 of the way to the rear. The cure for this was to smooth out the 2 ridges on the Tapco G2 hammer that slides across the bolt when the gun is cycled. After re-contouring just those 2 bumps in the hammer and polishing it to a very smooth / slick finish, the bolt carrier now slides very smoothly with no binding. The gun still feeds perfectly with no malfuctions ... Another cheap fix.
Pin Retainer Spring: The next item I had problems with was the hammer and trigger pin retainer spring. It's a pain in the ass to install, and I obviously didn't ever get it in correctly because I still had problems with the trigger pin working it's way out of the reciever after firing the gun. The fix was to replace the spring with a 'Power Custom' brand pin retainer plate. If you ever remove your fire control group, this is the best 8 bucks you will ever spend. BTW, a Tapco pin retainer plate that I originally bought did not fit my O-PAP. The Power Custom fit perfectly with no modification.
Pistol Grip: Next item replaced was the US made pistol grip that Century Arms installs on the O-PAP. I just didn't like it, so I bought a US made 'Arsenal' (AK-212B) black polymer grip from K-VAR to replace it with.
The only modification needed on this grip was to drill out the very end of the mount hole slightly because the head of the OEM mount bolt was just a little too large in diameter for the hole in the Arsenal grip. This took about 1 minute with a drill to fix, and now the new pistol grip fits perfectly, and looks like it has never been modified.
Side Optics Mount: The unusual SVD style side mount rail installed on these Yugo's was the next problem. This rail really limits you as to what aftermarket optics mount you can attach to it ... Here is the easy fix to this problem. This little modification made to any of your standard aftermarket AK optics mounts allows you to use the mount on the non-standard O-PAP side rail. http://www.akfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1723652#post1723652 (see post #2).
I used a 'Midwest Industries' MI-AK30SM scope mount which fit perfectly after the simple modification. This Midwest mount I installed includes standard sized built-in 30mm scope attachment rings, so there is nothing else to buy but the scope itself. The Midwest mount clamps on very tight to the O-PAPs rail now, so the scope holds zero without a problem. I included to this post a couple of photos of the Midwest mount and the Weaver scope mounted on the O-PAP.
Scope: The next item to address was the installation of a scope. Due to my my old eyes, I really have a problem hitting a 100 yard target using the iron sights. I thought about installing a Red-Dot on the gun, but these don't usually have any magnification, so in my case, I still cant see a small target at 100-150 yards with the Red-Dot very well. So, installing an adjustable 1-4x / 24mm Weaver 'Kaspa' scope seemed to be the ticket for me. This Weaver is not an expensive scope, but it works great and provides up to a 4x magnification (for me, this is perfect for targets out to about 150 yards). Anyway, due to the balistics of the 7.62x39 round, out past 200 yards, the bullet starts dropping like a rock, so I am not looking to aquire targets further out than 150-200 yards with any of these style guns anyway.
Furniture Refinishing: Last was the wood furniture on this O-PAP. The wood is solid (not plywood), but it is not finished from the factory. I guess the word "Raw" would be a good term for it. Although there was no damage at all to the wood on my gun, it was just real rough as far as I was concerned. I know some folks here want to retain the look of the furniture as it came from the factory, and that's perfectly fine. In my case, I just wanted the wood to look more 'finished'. Plus, I like 'tinkering' with <deleted>, so I obviously couldn't keep my hands off the furniture of this new gun.
The finish I used was 'Minwax' oil base stain and 'Minwax' semi-gloss clear polyurathane in a rattle-can spray. With proper sanding, then staining, and then 5 wet coats of spray polyurathane followed with a final 800 wet-sanding and polishing, the finish turned out real nice as far as I am concerned. The one big advantage of polyurathane is that it becomes a very hard durable finish. How long will it hold up? ... we shall see.
NOTE: Recently I replaced the wood stock with a DPH fixed skeleton stock. The adapter block used to mount this stock was provided by Krebs.
Price: For the price of $560 that I paid for this gun, I can honestly say that I am real happy with it. It is a great running gun with no bad habits or surprises ... however, did I say it's heavy
___________________________________________
I just want to be clear here. This gun shot perfectly well straight out of the box. All the little mods I did on this gun was just to make it a little better for me. And if your anything like me; You just can't keep your busy little fingers off something mechanical anyway. I guess I just like modifying stuff like this gun as much as I like going to the range and shooting it ... such as life
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