New Guy With New (To Me) Romanian

[cztulsa]

New to the site, but not new to the SKS.  Picked up a 1960 Romanian today to fill the hole in my collection.  Mildly disappointed in the fact that every number matches, from the buttplate to the rear sight, EVERYTHING but the stinking gas piston.....and it's 4 digits off.  Arrgggghhh!  Piston is pristine clean, too, so it was likely never fired after being swapped.  Anyway, nice wood with matching SN, cartouches, and stampings in the finger grooves, metal is very nice, and came with the cleaning rod and sling.  Outside of that stupid gas piston, I think I did OK.

[Loose}{Cannon]

'ok' depends on price I guess, but yep.....  Crazy nice Romy you have there!

[cztulsa]

Paid $400; didn't figure that was too bad.  Guy wanted $425, but I talked him out of that extra 25 bucks - told him I "wanted to feel like I made a deal".  I've bought a few others from him before, so he just laughed and accepted the offer.

[Loose}{Cannon]

An almost all matching Romy with a $50 sling.....  Your a thief!     

[running-man]

You could easily find an unnumbered gas piston from somewhere and it would then be a total non-issue. 

If the stock is matching and has the original font S/N on it, you've got a winner regardless what's EP'd on the piston.  A number being 4 digits off, heck how do you know that the worker didn't have a brain fart and mess up that last digit on it?  It's been seen with Russian SKSs many times before...

@ $400, that was a great buy. 

[cztulsa]

You could easily find an unnumbered gas piston from somewhere and it would then be a total non-issue. 

If the stock is matching and has the original font S/N on it, you've got a winner regardless what's EP'd on the piston.  A number being 4 digits off, heck how do you know that the worker didn't have a brain fart and mess up that last digit on it?  It's been seen with Russian SKSs many times before...

@ $400, that was a great buy. 

Thanks.  I thought about an unnumbered piston - is there any difference between the Rommy and some of the others?  I've never thought to look for differences.  I also thought about a factory mix-up; I've got an Albanian that has matching numbers but for the stock, and those numbers are the same, with the last two flipped.  Kind of wondered about the same thing there.

The guy sent me a pic of the rifle a few months ago after I bought a package deal from him for a steal (1 Russian non-refurb, 2 Russian light refurbs, and a Chinese blade para).  He called it a "laminated Chinese", but I caught the arrow-in-triangle on the receiver and knew better.  He said he was going to hang onto it for the time being.  Just on a whim I sent him a text asking about it again yesterday, and he was willing to sell.  I thought that was one of the hard to find slings with it - it's in nice shape, too.  I really like the wood on it, different than any of my other nation's rifles.  I guess I need to verify that font you mentioned; I'm pretty sure it's original.  I'll post a pic of the markings in the morning.

[running-man]

I think if you keep your replacement to an early '56 through say a '65 fabricated component from another nation you should be ok.  Gas pistons 'should' be universal replacements in any SKS, but we all know that 'should' and 'are' sometimes don't work out the way we'd like them to.  Lengths should be good as should the diameters of the piston shaft.  Only differences I'd be concerned about would be the piston head diameter fitting into your current gas tube.  Too tight a fit and you'll have jammed piston along with cycling issues. 

[Power Surge]

I Only differences I'd be concerned about would be the piston head diameter fitting into your current gas tube.  Too tight a fit and you'll have jammed piston along with cycling issues.

Even then, the piston chucked in a drill and some emery cloth will solve that issue

[Greasemonkey]

In my opinion .... It seems like a whole lot of trouble for 4 little digits. If it is a Romanian piston, leave it be, it's an actual original part, be thankful it doesn't say Tapco. If 4 serial digits bothers one that much, how is sticking a still mismatching Chinese, Yugoslavian, Russian or Albanian gas piston going to make it match, then that part is technically not original Romanian like the one in it.  In my book, knowing the Romanians marked their pistons, I would still deem it a mismatched rifle even with a numberless piston.

It''s a Romanian, 98% of the time they don't match, it's the nature of the beast. But, hey, what do I know, I will bet it works just fine as is, my 3 mismatched ones work as well as the matching one

Take a brillo pad and scrub them offending numbers off.

Congrats on a nice purchase and welcome...

[Direct Connection]

That is one of the nicest Romy's ive seen in a long time. That fish scale stock is very cool looking. especially there in the sun . Id be sticking my chest out if the only part not matching was the piston rod.  Yea get a brillo pad or buy yourself an EP engraver and get to work  .. Id like to see more pics of that stock !

[John Galt]

I would be very happy with that Romy!  You got a heck of a deal and didn't even have to be a sniper on Feebay to get the sling!  You did well cztulsa.

[montigre]

Very nice Rommy there!!   

As a novice collector, if it were me, I'd leave that gas piston alone.  Everything else matches on that gun and it is obvious it is not an arsenal refurb, so anyone with more than a couple of functioning brain cells would know it is original to the gun.  To mess with the gas piston, in my opinion, would be the same as Mitchell's "creating" one of their matching Mausers....     

[cztulsa]

Very nice Rommy there!!   

As a novice collector, if it were me, I'd leave that gas piston alone.  Everything else matches on that gun and it is obvious it is not an arsenal refurb, so anyone with more than a couple of functioning brain cells would know it is original to the gun.  To mess with the gas piston, in my opinion, would be the same as Mitchell's "creating" one of their matching Mausers.... 

Yeah - I thought about it a bit last night and will just leave that piston alone.  Like running-man said, who's to say someone at the arsenal didn't screw up?  Everything else is spot on.  I'll get a few more pics once we have some better light outside and I clean it up a bit; the fish scaling isn't near as prevalent on the right side as the left, but it is a pretty unique stock they put on it.  Never seen one like that before.

[running-man]

Very nice Rommy there!!   

As a novice collector, if it were me, I'd leave that gas piston alone.  Everything else matches on that gun and it is obvious it is not an arsenal refurb, so anyone with more than a couple of functioning brain cells would know it is original to the gun.  To mess with the gas piston, in my opinion, would be the same as Mitchell's "creating" one of their matching Mausers.... 

I don't know that I'd be as comfortable with that statement as you are montigre.  Even having any given rifle in my hands for a thorough inspection, I would never be able to make the call that a gun is unrefurbed/unissued/unfired.  There are just too many things the collecting community simply doesn't know about the refurb process for me to ever be comfortable using any one of those three labels.  "As-Issued" does not imply that the rifle has had no work done to it - guns in this category may have had a light reshellac or a replacement of an unnumbered component.  They most certainly have been taken down, inspected, and cleaned if nothing else.  Unless one knows the entire history of the firearm from birth on the assembly line, to issuance, to storage etc., I think it's an impossibly tough sell to try and definitively call something unrefurbed/unissued/unfired.  (Think of some of the M1 Garands sitting in the Springfield Armory Museum collection that were pulled directly from the line for presentation to various high level individuals collections and from there made their way to the museum)

[cztulsa]

Here is the offending gas piston.  More pics to come.

[Power Surge]

Here is the offending gas piston.  More pics to come.

I would definitely leave that with the gun. Either the guy at the arsenal flaked out and put two 4s instead an 8, or the piston got swapped with the one for 844...either way it's much more likely that rifle left the arsenal with that piston than it is that someone on the outside world had a gas piston issue and was able to find one close to your serial. Just my 2 cents

[Direct Connection]

Yea looks like Hugo missed it by one number lol. I'd be looking for a blank matching gas piston and get to work
 With the electro pincel  myself. It was meant to match anyways.

[cztulsa]

Nearly every SKS I've ever bought has been a toilet inside - people just can't find it in their hearts to clean them, I guess.  This is the end of the piston - I've never seen one this clean.  I'm 99% sure it's never been fired, at least with this piston.

[cztulsa]

Here is side "B"; not near as much fish-scale, but still a lot of figure in the wood.

[Power Surge]

Interesting. Looks like the same Beech wood that the Albanians used on their Chinese replacement stocks. Is that normal for a Romy?