[ Taiwanese T65 ] Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at a Taiwanese T65 rifle. This is the first AR pattern rifle that was adopted by Taiwan, and it's actually a short-stroke piston gun. I think there are some folks out there who think that the piston ARs began with the HK-416, and <i>au contraire</i>, they've been around
for quite some time before that. So the first piston gun was actually the
Colt 703 dating all the way back to 1969. And then there have been a variety of,
well, guns like this one ever since. Anyway, let's start with
a little bit of backstory here. Taiwan, which is ... a large
island off the coast of China. At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 the Nationalist elements in China had ...
suffered a series of defeats and pushbacks and eventually evacuated mainland
China and took refuge on Taiwan. Where they set up a Nationalist government
on Taiwan, and the Chinese Communist Party was never able to actually invade the island and
finish the war and fully defeat the Nationalists. And so what we end up with to this
day are essentially two separate Chinas. The Nationalist government on ...
Taiwan, the island of Formosa, and the Communist government
running mainland China. Obviously there's all sorts of ... implications to that
which we're going to leave out for the time being. But the US government had always supported
the Nationalist side in the Chinese Civil War. Interesting little side note here,
you think about the Korean War. The United Nations
sent troops into Korea where they were actively
fighting against Chinese troops. ... China is in the UN, why didn't China veto this? Well, it's because at the time the
recognised Chinese government represented in the UN was the
Nationalist government in Taiwan. Anyway, the United States has always
supported the Taiwanese government, and that includes small arms. Taiwan
bought a whole bunch of ARs in the 1960s. And then they actually adopted the M14, one
of very few countries to do so, as their Type 57. Now any of these Taiwanese type
designations, they do refer to a year of adoption, but they are based on
the Chinese calendar ... which is based on the year of the
Chinese Revolution, which is 1911. So to convert a Taiwanese designation to a
Gregorian western calendar year, you add 11 to it. So the Type 57 M14 is actually 1968. The US government actually sold Taiwan a bunch
of tooling from the old H&R M14 production line. Taiwan used it to manufacture
a whole slew of M14s. But before too long they decided
that they really wanted a 5.56 rifle. That's the way that NATO was going,
that's what the US was doing. And in order to keep pace,
Taiwan wanted to do the same thing. And so in ... 1973 they start a development
project for their own AR-based gun. They wanted to manufacture this
domestically, for obvious reasons. And the first prototypes
were ready in 1975. 1976 they formally adopt the
rifle as, of course, the Type 65. Once again, we are going to take the
Taiwanese designation, ... subtract 11 from the year of adoption to get the designation,
so that is our T65 rifle right here. And for the record this isn't an
original one, this is a clone build because a number of parts kits
for these came into HKParts.net. Where I believe they actually still have
some because the price is really quite high by most people's standards,
so they haven't sold all that fast. But I thought it was way too cool and
interesting and unusual of a gun to not get in on. So given that there are I believe two original,
authentic actual T65s in this country right now, and they are both dealer
sample machine guns, we are going to go ahead and take a closer
look at this one. So let's dive right into it. At the highest level, the T65 is basically
a Taiwanese version of the M16A1. It follows a lot of the same
layout concepts as the M16A1. Of course it has a 20 inch barrel out here,
the profile is the same as the M16A1. The muzzle device is
the same as the M16A1. The rifling twist is the same as the M16A1,
it's a 1 in 12 inch twist barrel that was designed for the
original 55 grain 5.56 cartridge. The whole rifle is relatively light, it comes
in at 3.3 kilos which is about 7.25 pounds. So it's handy, it's light, again very much
like a Taiwanese version of the M16A1. It does use standard M16
AR pattern magazines, I'm going to take that out so we can get
a little bit closer up into the gun here. Obviously the distinctive element visually is this
upper assembly, it doesn't have a carry handle. But it does have the sight
lifted up to the same height so that you get the same
effect as with the M16A1. You have a straight-line stock, recoil comes straight
back here right into the shoulder of the shooter. That ... prevents most
muzzle climb from happening. And then you have sights
that are lifted up to eye level. In a mechanical sense, what makes
this really distinct from the M16 is the fact that it is a
short-stroke gas piston system. It's the gas piston essentially off the AR-18, which is essentially the gas
piston off the SVT Tokarev rifle. So let's go ahead and take
a look at some of the features. Of course we have the birdcage muzzle
device out here, same as on the M16. We have a pretty standard elevation adjustable
(so threaded in and out) front sight post. But we also have a really
big chunky night sight. That would originally I believe
have been like a luminous paint. Today ... all the radioactivity is gone, all the paint's actually worn off,
so it's just a white front sight there. And that snaps up and down when
you want it and when you don't. We have a pretty thin
and kind of flimsy feeling and kind of loose handguard here,
which we'll take off in a moment. Note that this screw
is a replacement part. A lot of the parts kits that came
in were missing this screw, so HK Parts replaced them with just a
generic screw that has the same thread pattern. So the finish is wrong, but. The carry handle here is gone. Of course on
the original ARs the carry handle was intended primarily as a protective cover for the
charging handle that was located up here. And when the charging handle moved
to the back, the carry handle just stayed in place because,
well, it was already there. The Taiwanese, since they were making their
own new upper receiver dies and forgings, they had no reason to keep that
extra material, so they got rid of it. The rear sight is a two position
aperture much like the M16A1. This big ol' wheel is windage adjustment, and all it does is screw that
aperture piece left and right. And then we have our rear night sight. Two really big white dots that are
no longer luminous in any way, and that just folds down
when you are not using it. Standard AR dust cover. Note that there
are no gas vent holes in the bolt carrier, because there's no gas coming in here. We'll
get to that in a moment when we take it apart. There is no forward assist,
there is also no brass deflector, so very early AR sort of elements there. The charging handle is
basically identical to an AR. It's got a locking catch on the
left side, works just like an AR. Pistol grip is pretty
well worn on this example. It's again an early style AR pistol
grip, no finger groove on it there. The buttstock has a bit different
shape than we are used to on an AR. Which is, I don't know, neither better nor
worse really, it's ... a buttstock, it does its job. The rear sling swivel here is kind of neat
in that it is clearly inspired by the M14. So it will pivot over.
So if you're carrying the rifle flat across your back the
sling comes up from the side. Or if you're carrying it over your
shoulder the sling comes down here. Again, you see that on the
M1 Garand and the M14. And then we have a steel
trapdoor in the butt plate, there's a little storage compartment
in there for a cleaning kit and such. The original T65s had a three position
selector switch: safe, semi and full.
[This clone is semi-auto, the "auto" is cosmetic] When they replaced these rifles with an
upgraded version in the 1980s, the T65K2, they would add a 3 round burst as well,
but that was not on the original guns. The receiver markings
here are very simplistic. It's just Rifle, 5.56mm, T65
and a serial number. This is a reproduction lower courtesy
of INTL.MIL.CO, which is super cool. They have their actual legal markings
there on the inside of the trigger group. And so that allows them to make a variety
of clone-style receivers with proper markings. So a big thanks to them for helping me
out with one of these T65 receivers. Disassembly here is just like an AR.
We are going to pull the rear pin out. That allows me to pivot
the upper and lower apart. In fact I'm going to pull the front pin as well,
we'll just pop the upper and the lower off. The lower is essentially just
straight up standard AR-15. I will point out that the buffers on these ... (go ahead and take this out)
this uses a rifle ... size buffer. This is the original one that came with
my kit, this was originally soft rubber. This is no longer rubber, this is
now like hardened rubber powder. We've got some weights
in there, but if you use this, if you try and shoot with this thing,
this is going to disintegrate into powder, the weights are going to fall out and the
gun is just going to stop running on you. So for me, when I actually shoot this I have
a modern rifle buffer that I put in it instead. But it's cool to have the
original Taiwanese one. The buttstock is held on
by the top buttstock screw. If I take that screw out, there it is, I can then pull the buttstock
off the back of the rifle. There's our buffer tube with its
threaded hole on the end to lock in. We've got ... the detent spring
here for the rear takedown pin. That's pretty much
all there is to the lower. Moving on to the upper,
disassembles again just like an AR. There are a number of differences
you can immediately see on the bolt. There is a solid lug up here for the
piston to hit, there are no gas vents here. Firing pin comes out, this
disassembles just like an AR bolt. Note however, there are no
gas rings on the back of the bolt, because no gas is coming back in here. Normally you'd have gas rings, and
you would have essentially a gas piston built into the back end of the bolt carrier.
That's how the standard AR works. Not so much on the T65, because it's got its gas piston up here. So we'll go ahead and
take the handguard off. That screw and its
retaining plate come off. And then the upper
handguard just lifts off. Note that there is no heat shield in here,
there's just like reflective paint I guess, and hopes and prayers
in there to keep it cool. It does get hot. This is one of
the elements that they would improve on later patterns of the T65
and later rifle developments. The barrel nut here is a little
bit different than a standard AR. It tightens down, but then you've
got this plate over the front of it that positions the gas piston here. So gas is tapped out of the
front sight block right there, where it goes into this system, and it is
going to push this element back like so. And you can see the piston right there
on the inside of the upper receiver. That is pushing on this lug right here,
so that is essentially how it operates. We can take this apart
to its component pieces. And again, this is essentially
the exact same technology that went into the Tokarev or the AR-18. There we go, we've got three pieces
of the piston and its return spring. And then ... this is the fixed element of
the gas piston coming off of the gas block. There's the whole thing stripped.
These were formally adopted by the Taiwanese military and they
were used for a couple of decades. They are no longer still in use anywhere,
they have been replaced in Taiwan by newer patterns of AR rifle. The Taiwanese did find a fair number of
relatively small export contracts for these as well. Some of them in the Middle East, they went to Libya,
they went to Liberia, ... some of them went to Jordan. And then actually a bunch of contracts
in Central and South America. So in particular these went to El Salvador,
Panama, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, probably a couple of other
countries in the region. And as a result they've shown up in
a number of conflicts in that region. Some of them have shown up in the Middle East and
North Africa because of some of their African sales. These particular parts kits I believe came
in from somewhere in Latin America. We've seen a number of things come
in from Guatemala in the last few years, so maybe these were Guatemalan,
but I can't say for sure. I think they are a particularly
cool and unusual pattern of rifle. And I think now it's time to go ahead and take this
one out to the range and do some shooting with it. You know what does not
really blend in in Arizona? Taiwanese Marine Corps camouflage, but that's
OK because it blends in beautifully with the T65. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Whoo, just barely. Ow. So that's why the case buffer exists on ARs. Now I should be able to tweak
the extractor spring I believe, to prevent it from doing that,
to kick it out a little further over. But really this is from that
generation of guns that were simply not designed to be shot left-handed,
because left handers were intended to just be retrained
to shoot right-handed. The handguard is getting
a little toasty up here. Like there's a lot of hot gas ejecting
out from that ... gas piston system. But it is running nice and reliably, it's
comfortable to shoot, it's a lightweight gun. ... This is like the M16A1 with a short-stroke
piston conversion in it, which is kind of cool. One potential issue that I am
seeing here is with the front sight. Through your rear aperture,
that front sight post looks really quite similar to
those two little protective wings. On the M16 series we are used to
those wings having a nice curvature out, that makes them ... easy to just distinguish
quickly from the front sight post. This one not so much, especially when I'm switching
shoulders and shooting weak hand, weak eye. I have to take more time to identify that,
yes, I am in fact looking at the front sight. And ...
- That's exactly what I was going to say. - So I got one magazine left, let's try the
gigantic night sights built into the gun. Those were probably originally luminous. They are certainly not luminous
any more, it's been a bit too long. I mean they work. Not
very precise, but they work. Certainly easier to pick up
than the regular sights. Excuse the fact that I am literally
dripping sweat here it's like, I think it's about 105 or 107 [40-42 °C]
today out at the range. But we're doing this for you guys. Ahhh! Whoo! That's really hot up there. Toasty. Aright, I'm going to empty this mag and
then we are going to get out of the sun. This has been a really fun gun to shoot.
It's a fantastically cool piece of history. Really cool that these parts kits
came in, there weren't many of them, but there were enough for
me to jump on one myself.
