HOW TO: FAL mags to SCAR17S

[col faulkner]

Outstanding. This works great. I use a moto tool with a rotary file for the mag catch hole to do the grunt work after drilling the hole with my bench mounted drill press. I also use the moto tool with a grinding pyramid made of stone to do the grunt work on the feed lips. Then fine tune it with the files and finish off with the crayex points. Manually feed the rounds through it then off to the range.
Have made up 4 this way so far using 2 factory FN and 2 Steyr magazines.
360rds dumped through them with no problems. Using FNM, S. African, WW white box and Federal American Eagle ammo. Fantastic.
Have 2 factory FN SCAR mags to get the dimensions from of which the demsions are quite identical.
Thanks for the great help.

[col faulkner]

Update: for those who have or come into a supply of the old Commonwealth pattern L1A1 type magazines, do the modification in steps 2 & 3 as Charlie said. What I did for step 1 was grind the front locking lug down. It's huge compared to a metric pattern magazine which I gently grind down too. In the USA Commonwealth pattern magazines are quite commonly known as Inch Pattern magazines.
So now you have another source of magazines to convert. BTW, up here in New England, there are a lot of Inch Pattern magazines. Lots of Metric's too but I'm surprised how many Inch Patterns are at gun shows and also those collecting dust at dealerships. I use to have an all correct BSA L1A1 a few decades ago. Quite a nice rifle in it's own right.
Another BTW, if you forget to bend the front feed lips up a millimeter or two and get the cross center jams Charlie wrote about earlier, just taking a pair of good pliars and bending them up a bit will hopefully cure the problem as it did for me. That is if you did the filing as he said in the first place.
Good luck. Questions and feedback most welcomed.

[westcoastscars]

Anyone tried this with the 30 round steel FAL mags? I imagine it would be the same, but would like to know if anyone has tried this yet...just ordered two of them to play with.

[col faulkner]

No, not yet. I have a crate full of old L1A1 30rd magazines so I'll try one sooner or later. Just to give you and update on my progress, my six 20rd metric FAL conversions to the SCAR are totally successful. Have run them all 10 or more times each through my SCAR with no problems. A lot of patience with the files on the forward feed lips but it's very very doable.

[scarface]

Has anyone tried to modify a XS Products FAL 50 round drum to work with the SCAR17 yet? Seems like the ultimate high capacity solution to the SCAR.

[scarface]

CharlieB,

Thank you soooo much for doing the leg work on this. You just cost/saved me some $$$.

Anyone tried this with the 30 round steel FAL mags? I imagine it would be the same, but would like to know if anyone has tried this yet...just ordered two of them to play with.

I just finished a DSA 30 round mag. I have only hand cycled it, but so far so good...

[col faulkner]

And how did it work at the range?