Why the G3 sucks. Flame suit on!

[Music] hey guys welcome back so today we're out the range to upset a few folks but it's mostly tongue and cheek now before I get into the reasons why I dislike the G3 I want to preface this conversation by saying look guys I'm a military Small Arms collector I love the G3 it's an iconic firearm from the Cold War it definitely you know was would served quite well in the militaries where it was used used but when you take a look at this rifle and compare it to its compare it to its peers from that era in my opinion the gun just comes up a little bit short so keep in mind this gun the basic operating principle around it was developed in World War II Germany after the war the technology went to Spain Spain refined it came up with a sety rifle and then Germany was looking for a new infantry rifle they chose the fal but Belgium said uh no Germany you just got done invading us so we're not going to rearm you go pound sand and so option number two was licensing the set me from Spain and that's where we got the G3 HK91 so we're going to talk about some of the features of the gun talk about some of the things I dislike about it but just keep in mind folks even though I'm talking about the features I dislike I still do love the G3 for what it is let's get started with today's video a lot of folks ask me how can I get involved in the Firearms business in that particular community and one of the best ways to do that is to become a gunsmith every gunsmith I know is just overbooked with work it's a very good living and so if you would like to be become a gunsmith you need to go to a Gunsmithing school or become an apprentice for an existing gunsmith but modern gun school is accredited college that also works with veterans in the GI Bill where you can go and get a degree from accredited college in Gunsmithing and then go out and start your own Gunsmithing business which I think is a really great option again throughout my entire life gunsmiths have always been able to earn a really good living assuming they have a really strong work ethic so please check out modern gun school I do have a link in the video description below so one of the first things about the G3 that I am not a fan of and that's its method of construction I don't have a PO a problem with the polymer the polymer is not the issue the the issue is sheet metal I don't like sheet metal Firearms now I understand why sheet metal was used during World War II sheet metal became quite popular for manufacturing firearms because it was quick dirty and cheap they could pump out the Firearms very quickly and very cost effectively and in time of war that does matter right but the end result gives you things like the Sten gun or the M3 grease gun or the G three now to hk's credit as far as Sheet Metal Guns go only the Germans could refine it to the point where it's almost a work of art I mean truly the HK made guns are very very nice in their construction I still don't like sheet metal and I have a personal story as to why you go back in time when I was big into machine guns I had an HK 53 full auto and I was out shooting it I had it strapped across my chest with the HK style sling I had the collapsible stock extended and then the I didn't get it fully clipped on the rear of the rifle and so it disconnected the rifle swung down and the stock hit the ground like this at speed and again that you know wire stock if you will was extended which applies leverage back here if you push down on it right here it gets quite a bit of Leverage up here It ultimately did bend the receiver back here and I didn't know that until I fired the gun and when I fired it the bolt and carrier just stuck to the rear being me I found the closest tree slammed it muzzle first into the tree and it the bad the bolt went home stripped another round fired it and I continued that for a couple of magazines until I straightened the gun out just by beating it against a tree and firing it but that was the first time I realized oh my gosh these things are really susceptible to mishandling abuse causing potential functional problems so that turned to me off of them very quickly I would not even consider using one of their collapsible stocks on a go-to rifle I would only go with the full stock because of that experience but aside from that the sheet metal is just okay it it gives you the lightweight weight it gives you that cost uh Effectiveness in terms of being able to manufacture a lot of these guns very cheaply but it's just not ideal for a number of different reasons now I know some of you are going to say well there's nothing wrong with that sheet metal is great and that's fine you can have that opinion if given the choice between this and something like an FAL or AR10 or something like that I would always go with the fal the AR10 or something else one of the key reasons again being that sheet metal so let's go into number two the ergonomics on the G3 aren't ideal now I have large hands which makes it a little bit easier for me to use the controls of the gun but there's still certain things about it that we've just moved on technologically right now I know a lot of folks out there for example love the HK slap there's just something I don't know fun about pulling the bolt to the rear rotating it up sticking a magazine in slapping that sucker around it's just manly right but in the grand scheme of things the gun lacks a last round bolt hold open every time you go to Reloaded if you take a full 20 round magazine with the bolt home this is only five rounds but sometimes it can be very difficult to get the mag to properly seat so you think you'll get it in there you don't have it in there then you go to cycle the bolt and your magazine falls out so the best way to load a rifle like this is to First Lock the bolt to the rear take the spent magazine out put the fresh one in and then slap her home time consuming and it draws your focus away from the battlefield or the fight that's going on so you can focus on the gun to achieve the reload TR that against something like the fal the M16 the G36 anything else and you're going to find anything especially has a bolt hold open on the last shot fired you're going to find those guns can be loaded when you're not even really looking at them and perhaps there are people out there experts with a G3 that can accomplish the same thing without having take a look at the gun to get it uh loaded but I'm just saying for the average gun owner the average shooter this gun just is a step or two behind it's peers so the other thing about the ergonomics is that if you have a traditional styled rifle like this you have this big hump back here and I'll never forget this A buddy of mine in high school had a G3 in the80s and had HK91 and he wore big 80 style corrective lenses on his glasses and I'll never forget how when he would fire it his glasses would be right here on the hump as he's trying to get a sight picture and when the gun would come back in Recoil that hump would drive his glasses into his face sometimes even going so far as to leave a mark on his face or even cut his face face with those glasses so this hump The Recoil of the gun uh can be a problem for some folks that especially have big corrective lenses and stuff like that now that can be remedied by changing the length of pull on the stock there's different things you can put on the back of the stock to increase the length of pull get your face back a little bit but still you want to have your face fairly close especially if you're using an optic because you know that's just the design of the rifle however with an optic it will set up higher bringing your face up away from the stock but this hump I thought that was really interesting that's something that stuck with me throughout my life also the fire controls on the gun are a little bit Out Of Reach of the average hand-sized person so for me I can reach up there and get that selector lever with my long thumb but I have met and and know a lot of people that basically either use their offand to select the fire or break their grip rotate it over so they can hit the lever and then come back and get their grip on the the weapon less than ideal now this is some of these things have been rectified with later Firearms we'll talk a little bit about that if I remember but then with the early Imports the HK 91s this is a Springfield Armory G3 before they had to restamp them because HK got salty about them calling it a G3 this is one of the rare Collectibles I have in my collection but this is also in the same style as the original HK91 we didn't have the flapper release on the HK91 right which means it's like an AK style you can pinch it and release the magazine and pull it out for a lot of us to Rel release that magazine now keep in mind my finger is longer than average most people fingers would stop right where my knuckle is right here I have to break my grip to get that magazine release to release now the flapper changes everything but those early guns that was you know problematic and there's still plenty of them out there like this one that have the you know the release right here and don't have that flapper but the flapper does change all that and then of course you'll find because the gun is so big people of smaller stature might struggle with reaching this far forward they may have to break it from their shoulder to get it here so they can actually reach it because as you can see in the shoulder like this my long arm is fully extended to grab that charging handle so you will see people doing this so they can operate the gun again bring it out of the shoulder less than ideal ergonomically not ideal so just overall the gun is a little bit backwards in terms of the ergonomics there's certain things that could have been done in the engineering department to to improve it that would have made it a little bit more ergonomic adding something like a last round bolt hold open things like that but also keep in mind the Europeans for whatever reason are just fine with weapons that don't lock open on last shot fired but in America that's something that we do prefer in the last segment I actually included two and three together inadvertently number three was talking about how the reloads on the firearm are less than ideal we talked about that in the last segment basically the whole reaching thing the guns that lack a paddle release it just makes it more difficult lack of a last round bold hold open so the next Point number four is disassembly now disassembly on these can be a little bit challenging especially on the HK91 it requires a special technique to get the gun put back together so let's go ahead and talk about that taking the gun apart first you want to make sure the weapon's empty so the Magazine's out going to pull the bolt to the rear make sure the chamber's empty let that bolt go home back here you have two pins I like captive pin I do not like loose pens that can be lost in the field now to the Germans credit they came up with this little system in the stock where you can put the pins into the stock to keep track of them that's assuming you don't lose the pin from here to here in Tall Grass vegetation or whatever I'd much rather just have captive pins so once you got those pins out now you can pull the stock off here's your recoil spring guide rod all part of that stock assembly now you can take the trigger housing off you can take the trigger housing apart by just rotating this lever up pulling it out and then taking the trigger housing out but that's not really necessary for regular field maintenance and then you grab the charging handle here break those rollers Loose by pulling that up that'll break the rollers loose and pull it back a little bit just so you get a hold of it it being the bolt and carrier and then you just slide that right out the rear now I've wiped this down quite a bit so you guys can see the bolt and carrier but if you think the M16 is a dirty rifle that it poops where it eats you've never used a roller delayed firearm like the MP5 hk93 or HK91 they make the AR-15 look clean by by comparison so but carbon doesn't cause the guns problems just like carbon doesn't cause M16 problems just don't put stuff in the carbon that would cause it to get hard right which can then cause the gun problems or just keep them clean all right so taking this apart is where things get a little bit interesting so some folks you'll you'll see videos out there people doing all sorts of stuff like putting bolt carrier groups backwards in the receiver and beating them you know to get the bolt set and just crazy stuff I've seen over the years and that might be fine on a military rifle but on a collectible like this you probably don't want to do that so let's talk about how you take it apart so this is Roller delayed and so all that means is that when this bolt goes home these rollers pop out into recesses and that gives a mechanical advantage to the bolt and carrier so when the cartridge fires The Recoil starts to push rearward it has to overcome those rollers which will retract when they do they'll push that bolt head forward and then the bolt and carrier can move rearward so to take it apart I got to get the bolt head out of here now there's this massive claw right here on the left side of the bolt carrier and it has a spring in it that is so stiff that you really can't push it with your thumb they have tools meant to compress the spring to make the reassembly much easier but it is not required again it goes to the whole thing of just learning the proper technique versus using special tools or putting things in receivers and beating them into submission so to take this apart all you have to do is rotate the bolt head like that to its disassembly the bolt head comes off take the Locking piece this is the piece that pushes those rollers out rotate that around and it'll come out and then you have your firing pin and spring comes apart very easily this is where people struggle with it and this is a part that really sucks so putting it back together put the spring on take your locking piece put everything into the bolt carrier rotate that locking piece around like that get it vertical take your bolt now this claw will interact with the bolt right here so you got to get the claw popped up to here then you have this camming surface that'll allow it to cam up push it up give you a mechanical advantage to compress that spring to get the bolt to lock into place so I'm going to put the bolt on and I don't know if Jason can get a shot of that claw right there the bolts resting against so I'm going to push it back and that's going to pop it up onto the claw up onto the bolt head hold on I'll get it there we go and then I'm going to pull it out just a little bit try to line everything up if I pull it out too far it'll pop right back off if I have it all the way back up against the carrier I won't be able to rotate it so once I get it set to about the right position as I just popped it off which is all too easy to do once you get it to the right position then you can just use your hand to get a mechanical advantage and rotate that bolt head around around until it locks like that and make sure it stays extended if it pops back here you're going to have to take it apart and start the process over again because you're never going to pull that bolt head away from the carrier all right so there you go the simple way to do it it makes it look easy but it takes some practice and technique then just put your bolt and carrier back in the receiver get up there overall though the disassembly once you learn the technique isn't all that bad would prefer the captive pins would prefer you didn't have to struggle with the bolt and use special techniques you'll also notice I put my pins in one going this way one going that way and you'll see some folks doing that all right back together this is my ptr91 this one one is dressed out with some Modern amenities we'll talk a little bit about that after I talk about 0. five 0.5 is recoil so as far as 30 caliber battle rifles go I would say the G3 is probably the most recoiling rifle if you compare it to the fal the M14 AR10 AR10 can be a little bit Punchy but the bolt carrier velocity on this thing because of its roll delay system makes that bolt carrier velocity really high this is why it launches spent cases into orbit it Chucks them into the next zip code it's cuz that bolt carrier velocity is so high well that comes to an abrupt end at the rear of the receiver as the bolt and carrier come to the rear of their travel that comes from abrupt in transfers that recoil to the shooter shoulder then slams forward with high velocity so on Full Auto these guns are almost uncontrollable except in the most you know experienced hands I have shot these on Full Auto you can keep them under control but the world around you just turns to a blur you can keep the barrel down but you have no idea where that ammo is going but that's not uncommon for battle rifles in general you would also see the M14 being restricted to just semi-automatic fire only when it was originally designed for f fully automatic fire you would see countries that issued these taking the full auto uh selective capability out of them just making them semi only and you've even seen people doing that with fal's but I would say comparing it to the other rifles in its class from that era its peers this gun definitely recoils more let's fire off a few rounds with it here really quick it's it's not unpleasant or painful to shoot don't get me wrong it's just slightly different than its peers so you'll see me doing the reloading process so again you want to bring that bolt to the rear first put the magazine in so you make sure you get positive lock slap down and let's beat up a steel plate down there we got challenge Target all right now it did not lock open we've talked about that so that's it so also something else you might want to think about when you're shooting these I don't know if you'll be able to see it but it puts creases in the brass it flutes the brass because it uses a fluted chamber you can see the flutes on the neck and sometimes this one a little bit it dings the mouth of the case I've seen these pretty heavily dinged where it's almost like a V shape in the neck so for Reloaders HK 91s generally aren't your best option either but that wasn't on my list so The Recoil on it is just a little bit high but again it's not unpleasant it's not painful it's just more pronounced than some of its peers so last let's talk about one thing that didn't make the list because things have changed a little bit if you like a classic HK91 those guns are out there very expensive but they're out there those guns aren't going to have the paddle release they're not going to have 1913 rails welded to the top of them so they're going to be somewhat Limited in some of the accessories you can use you can use the claw mounts things like that B&T makes claw mounts that put a pick rail up here it s a little bit taller than the welded one um but if you get a gun like the PTR which you see here you can get it and you can also buy these lowers and put them on your Classics if you want to as well but you get these more modern polymer lowers which make this grip a little bit more palatable to people with smaller hands it makes a little bit easier to get to the selector lever so it's definitely an improvement over the original design that we had access to and then of course with the PTR you can get it with its welded rail up here uh there are companies that sell rails that you can have welded onto your guns I would highly recommend you do not do that to Classic Collectibles if you're going to put a rail on something do it to a PTR or something like that and now here we have an example of a mlock handguard that you can put on here so you can modernize the gun to a certain degree you'll also notice I have a different incap on here with M4 style stock so it gives me adjustable length of pull if you ask me this and this just look hideous on the gun does not look appealing to me whatsoever but it adds that functionality for those of you that are just married to this design for some reason now the downside to going with something like a PTR is that it's like a box of chocolates you just don't know what you're going to get now this PTR I purchased this one was purchased well before coid and this one ran fine right out of the box then I got one right around 2020 or so one of the the green stock rifles the GI model and I remember it going back to PTR at least three times Jason says four and we had Barrel problems the flutes were cut so deep in the chamber that the cases were sticking in the chamber and you could look in there and the flutes were super deep and super sharp and the gun just had all all sorts of functional issues so I had to keep sending it back until they finally got it right they told me they had a barrel shortage and so one of the reasons I waited many many months to get the gun finally back and somewhat working was because I was waiting on a new Barrel so you just don't know what you're going to get with the Clones the same thing goes with the fal and DS arms you know you go back 20 years DS arms is putting out LMT you know receiver fals that were just absolutely gorgeous great builds you fast forward to today and they're making all their own Parts the stocks are cheap their their assembly is just all over the place I've bought dsrs FAL I'll just never do it again because they were so off just so wildly you can't even say it was just assembled wrong it was manufactured wrong to the point where it wouldn't even feed from one side of the magazine on my last one we did a whole video on that so that's just kind of the problem you run into with the modern day clones now some ptrs out there going to run just fine like this one and others you may have to send it back a few times or buy one or two until you get one that works right less than ideal cuz these things are not inexpensive so that's it guys that's the reason reason why the G3 is kind of lower on my list I would put it above above the M14 in terms of favorites but it comes in second to the fal from the big Bo battle rifles from the Cold War I know it's going to upset some of you you guys love this thing and I understand why it is a neat gun it's very fun to shoot you know good accuracy very reliable all that stuff it's just I have some gripes against it but then I have gripes against all sorts of guns and maybe we'll do some additional videos along that along those lines if you enjoy this one so comment down below let us know how you enjoy today's video if you have some things that you like or dislike about the G3 go ahead and post those down below who knows you may give us an idea for a future video If you guys like to support us here at the Military Arms channel the best way to do that to become part of our patreon family there's a link in the video description below also right here on YouTube you got the thanks and join button underneath the video player you're watching right now Mash either one of those and you can support us right here on YouTube in the age of demonetization last but not least please swing by check out Copper Custom thank you for 15 years of support we'll talk to you guys soon

Channel: Military Arms Channel

Views: 122,627

Keywords: firearm, rifle, pistol, review, iraqveteran8888, military arms, military, small arms, call of duty, video game, movie, gun review, firearms review, testing, firearm testing, gun testing, hk91, hk g3, g3, cold war, german, cetme, big bore battle rifle, battle rifle, best, worst

Id: n6bwfXnZd1E

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023