Gepard

[SPG]

Blame snorkelman for posting it in the "Guns you wish they made" thread, but I really like the Gepard.

 

 

I wasn't certain about the combination of wood fore-end and wood-coloured plastic grip though, so I did a bit of photoshopping and decided I liked this best.

 

 

The plan is to do a bit like THIS guy did and base it round a pistol with AK parts round it.

 

Thing is I'm wondering if I need to go to the extent of getting an AK, or can I just get the receiver and receiver cover somewhere? It seems a bit of a waste even if he did use a CYMA. I've found plenty of plans on the internet for bending up AK receivers (RS) so thinking about it, the receiver cover is really all I need. The rest of the bits, I'm pretty sure I can fabricate.

 

Any ideas for where to get AK bits?

[snorkelman]

yeh Id go with folding your own for the reciever blank. someone thats put a guarder kit together using a beta-spetz as the donor is bound to have a top receiver cover, got to be worth an ad in the wanted section

[Xaccers]

Phone around the chinese made guns shops in your area and see if they have any returned cyma/jg AK's that are broken/DOA and see if you can pick them up cheap.

[MDK_Marshal]

Question: What are you going to do about mags?

 

Seeing as the magazines are going where the motor should be...

 

Your best bet may be to try something unorthodox; hack away at the gearbox and mount the motor differentley. But then, the mags will still go INTO the gearbox, so problems galore.... =/

[snorkelman]

Question: What are you going to do about mags?

 

Seeing as the magazines are going where the motor should be...

 

Your best bet may be to try something unorthodox; hack away at the gearbox and mount the motor differentley. But then, the mags will still go INTO the gearbox, so problems galore.... =/

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

its going to be using a gas blow back pistol for the power source (slide turned into a fake AK bolt), there isnt any motor or gearbox he just needs to choose a pistol of relatively slim grip width (ie a single stack design) that has a similar angle to that of the gepard pistol grip

[MDK_Marshal]

Ah..... That makes a lot more sense now!

 

Carry on...

[SPG]

Although actually I'm thinking of using an AEP, not a GBB. At the moment I'm thinking the Glock18c, the trigger guard and grip look to be similar shapes, and I don't think it'll be too wide.

 

Advantages to AEP over GBB.

 

Easier to fit in the AK receiver, I don't have to worry about making room for the slide to move. I can probably fix the slide in the reciever so that I can remove the AEP out of the bottom of the AK.

Larger magazine capacity 30 rds AEP, 23rds GBB - normal mag100 rds AEP 48 rds GBB - Hicap mag.

More rounds per charge (from reviews) 400 rounds AEP per battery 69 rounds GBB per charge of gas.

Cheap spring upgrade on AEP - usually needs extra battery pack, plenty of space for that in the AK receiver.

Much easier (Gas is rare where I live, I have to travel an 80 mile round trip to buy it)

 

Disadvantages

 

No blow back so can't make bolt cycle (I can live with that)

 

So AEP for me.

[DarkLite]

ELEMENT sell a AK74 metal reciever set with a pistol grip, body and reciever cover, if that helps.

[my_plague_666]

looks great. especialy liking the black furnature. are you sure about making it silver though? what are you going to do for the stock?

[my_plague_666]

since this is quite obviously based on an AKS74U you might want to consider buying the new cyma, or a unicorn kit. that way you'll have the hinged reciever cover, stock folding and locking machanism, handguard (whihc can be kryloned black, its plastic on the cyma). but yeah, put a cyma glock inside it and it could be kickass, all you'd need to do is cut some bits off the mags to make them look less glock-ish, you could re-wire it too so it could fit a stick batt as well, which would give you a big ROF boost.

 

can anyone see the mag release on that thing?

[Tinkerton]

you could always make it out of a clone/TM AEP gearbox...

 

i imagine the MP7 one would work quite well, with glock mags up the grip maybe?

[renegadecow]

While you're on Photoshop, you might as well try rendering an image with the full length of an AK receiver to see if its going to mess up the whole look. The Gepard receiver is at least a full inch shorter. If you aren't satisfied with the longer look, you might want to use a plastic receiver AK as it would be easier to hack into bits than a metal one.

[SPG]

Oddly enough I was just doing that as the e-mail notification came in. To me it's far too long. That's why I was thinking about not getting hold of a whole Ak, only the bits needed and folding up my own receiver.

 

 

I can see how I could modify the AK stock though, although I had thought about just welding one up myself, you can see I've already changed the photoshopped stock slightly compared to the RS.

 

To be honest I know it's not going to be 100% accurate, so if it's just an "inspired by" rather than a replica I'm not over worried. After all which of us has seen the real steel?

[snorkelman]

aye main reason fold your own is best bet

 

With a decent front and rear trunnion giving it some support then even a folded aluminium receiver ought to be fine (specially if you plan on polishing it)

 

by looks of it all the length is off the front of the receiver cover thanks to the shortened ejection port (at first I was wondering if you might need to cut and shut weld a top cover to get the shorter receiver cover length)

[my_plague_666]

i still think it would be easier to chop a cyma AKSU, plus the stock would almost be ready made. if you removed the bottom part of the AKSU stock you could easily make it looks like a gepard one.

 

as far as i see you could just chop about an inch and a half off of the front of the top cover and reciever and move the rear sight back a bit for the shorter cover.

 

i think the flash hider it comes with looks better than the silencer too IMO (the gepard one, not the AKSU one)

[SPG]

Well I'm going to buy an AKSU for all the bits and pieces, the woodwork, the top cover, the sights etc as it works out cheaper to buy the whole thing than to just buy bits and pieces. Whether I'll fold up a receiver myself, or whether I'll use theirs I don't know, I'll see when I get to it. The advantage of folding my own is that I can tailor make in advance the right holes for the pistol to sit inside, with the ready made, if the holes are too big, or in the wrong place I'll have to potentially fill them.

 

The stock, yes I'd thought the same thing, just modify the AKSU. Looking around on the net I've seen a couple of different stock types anyway on the Gepard, so I'm guessing they wen't through various prototypes.

 

I prefer the silencer myself, but I think I'll just work it out so I can fit both, and then that'll be even better.

[my_plague_666]

you know that the AKSU folding mech and locking gubbins is built into the reciever right? you wouldnt be able to do your own and keep the stock, it would probably be easier to just chop a cyma AKSU

[SPG]

Yes, I know that bit, and it's the bit that makes it most difficult. If you look at the overlay closely (sorry it's a bit small) you can see that when it comes to modifying the AKSU what really needso be done is to cut a bit off the front of the top cover and a bit off the back of the receiver. That way the new pistol grip lines up with the current mag well, the small indentation lines up properly too. The downside is that the whole stock attachment point is then cut off.

 

So, that's why I still think folding my own receiver is better. I can put in the indentation myself (slowly but surely) I can cut out the correct holes for the pistol to fit in, and drill the holes in the right place for the pins and fire selector. What I can do however is use the existing rear of the AKSU receiver as the rear trunnion, and mount it "inside" the newly folded receiver. Yes it'll be a tiny bit wider, but not noticable.

 

What I really need is an exploded diagram of an AEG AKSU, for preference the CYMA or another cheapy, as I'm not going to spend hundreds on something I'm going to cut up.

[my_plague_666]

are you sure thats best? im almost positive that with the real steel they just chopped the front of the reciever rather than the back.

 

i recon it'd be worth a go, you'd have an AKSU receiver and if it doesnt work you could always go with your plan

[SPG]

Well it's taken lots of reading, but the real steel in fact uses a totally different receiver to the AKSU. Sure it's related, but there's no chopping down existing parts or anything, it's all new (the perk of stamped metal construction I guess).

 

I've not foiund anything out on the stock though, it's obviously not a chopped AKSU stock, if you look at the top picture you can see it's very different. The one I photoshopped, is just that photoshopped and cleaned up a bit, but I also changed the angle. I think that bit will have to be homebuilt or very heavily modified.

 

And now to try and find a cheap AKSU in rural France.

[snorkelman]

my_plague - nopes they mainly shortened the rear of the receiver you can see that the thru pin for the fireselect is much closer to the rear end of the gepard than a normal ak the fronts been trimmed down a bit too but not as severely as rear

 

SPG as far as a donor goes consider the dBoys a good bet trunnions are riveted in and would just need rivets drilled out handguards look OK (or will with a coat of varnish) front trunnion top cover mount rear sight etc would all be usuable and outer barrel.

 

[my_plague_666]

ah, interesting about the reciever.

 

but the stock does look like an AKSU stock with the lower part removed, reinforced aroun the buttplate and only half of the hingey bit that the stock attaches to (yep thats a technical term)

[SPG]

*SPG trots off to look for dBoys in France* Thanks for that, that's excellent.

 

As for the stock, well it'll have to be chopped up a bit anyway, the AKSU stock would of course be too long if you think about it, so I shall see what happens when I get to it.

 

Now to choose the AEP to go inside.

[FW200]

Hmm.. just found this:

[SPG]

That's excellent, where did you find it? I've been Googling for ages and have never seen anything that clear, nor big before.

 

Right, well I've placed my orders, it's a dBoys AKS74U and a Cyma Glock 18c. Cheap and cheerful, but reading reviews it seems both should be OK, and really the only important thing about the AKSU is the outside anyway (look out for the insides appearing in the sales section).

 

I can see the biggest difficulty is going to be the selector switch, as the Glock's is on the left (as you're aiming down the gun) and the Gepard's is on the right. Hopefully I can find a way to make the Gepard's selector work, rather than having to remove the pistol or top cover to change it over. If the worst comes to the worst I can always leave it on fully auto .

 

The second will be that the barrel of the AKSU is slightly above the barrel of the Glock if you line the triggers/trigger guards up, I don't know how this will work out when it all comes together, we'll just have to see.

 

When they arrive I'll take pics as I build it up