Boosted by the relative success of my initial 'modding' of the suppressor for my AK74U I decided to undertake some more tinkering. This time to tighten up and improve some things that I wasn't quite happy about at the front of my Kalash shorty AK.

For a start there was that damn rattley foregrip and front site. These were manufacturing errors - which I described in my initial review of the Kalash AK74U. Vague tolerances in the manufacture had meant the front end of the AEG shook and rattled when skirmishing. Not something you want.

Then there was the fault I discovered when trying to remove the 'easily removable' Krinkov flash hider. In short, it wasn't 'easily removable'!

Above: These shots show the muzzle adaptor and retaining pin (left) which secure the flash hider or suppressor to the barrel. The picture on the right shows how the retaining pin is designed to lock into a notch in the flash hider (and supprssor), it was this pin that was initially too long and that had to be trimmed.

The retractable holding pin which secures the flash hider was made slightly too long. This meant when you pushed it down, it still didn't clear the notch in the flash hider and so would not allow the flash hider to be unscrewed.

The Remedy

The remedy for this situation was simple enough - once again, thanks to my handy Dremmel Multitool - as all I had to do was trim about a millimeter and a half off the pin to allow it to clear the retaining notch in the flash hider. 

To do this I first had to disassemble the entire front section of the AEG, removing the wooden foregrip, then unscrew the flash hide retaining collar and , finally, the foresight section.

Interestingly, the retaining collar is nothing less than a 14mm to 24mm AK thread adaptor! Had I only known this before undertaking the install mod I described earlier! I was sadly unaware of this fact due to the fact that I was initially unable to remove the flash hider.

Having separated the AK front sight from the barrel, I could then start to trim the retaining pin which is a component of the foresight. This was achieve using a grinding attachment on my Dremmel, followed by some tidying with a Swiss file. 

Unexpected benefits - and an unfortunate surprise

Disassembling and then reassembling the front section had unexpected repercussions. I found that the factory had not tightened many of the parts correctly, and in simply reassembling the parts and tightening correctly I managed to solve my main problem - the nasty rattling! (Although, had the parts been produced to higher tollerances, the fit would have been such that additional tightening would not have been neccessary. But that's cheapsoft for you - if I had wanted better quality, I would have spent the additional £200+ on a VFC AK74U.)

Above: The cracked casting on the bottom of the foresight. The 'monkey' metal just isn't up to the stresses and strains of over-working that real firearm grade steel is designed to endure.

Unfortunately, all this tinkering revealed another manufacturing problem. The Kalash front sight is a one piece casting made of cheap 'monkey' metal. It is very weak underneath the barrel collar, and a hair crack had occurred during manufacture. This decided to open up during the stresses of retightening.

There was nothing much I could do about this fault except disguise it, as getting a replacement is almost certainly going to be next to impossible (or at least too expensive).  

Results

Obviously, the main benefit of this work was that I could now easily remove the Krinkov flash hider, and consequently easily replace it with my PSB-4 suppressor. But, riding the gun of the annoying rattle at the front end was a satisfying bonus.

Above: The work finished, I can now easily swap between the Krinkov flash hider and the PBS-4 suppressor!

However, it was frustrating that all this work uncovered yet another fault in the manufacturing of the Kalash, but even this cloud had a silver lining (of sorts). For, while Chinese 'monkey' metal may be brittle and consequently prone to the kind of fracturing that I incured, the metal's softness means that you can easily carry out mods of the type that I have described without specialist tools.

I would not have liked to have tried these mods had my AEG and components been made of real firearms grade metals. But it does highlight that great care must be exercised in carrying out work on cheapsoft parts - otherwise you could actually do more harm than good!