Limit the market agreed because of our 10rd fetish, but it will be a much better gun that's more reliable and true to its original design. Much like I prefer cz and San with their original mags.
T97 Gen2 coming to Canada
- Thread starter sunnyside
- Start date
Limit the market agreed because of our 10rd fetish, but it will be a much better gun that's more reliable and true to its original design. Much like I prefer cz and San with their original mags.
I'm not sure how a magazine would make it more reliable? If they had a qbz style mag with the same feed ramps but retrofitting it to 5.56 it sounds like it would have the same issues.
I find the problem to be consistency in magazines. Be that one brand to another, or one Norinco to another.
One mag is 100% reliable, another is junk and ramming rounds into the ramp. A different style mag wouldn't change that imo.
I find the problem to be consistency in magazines. Be that one brand to another, or one Norinco to another.
One mag is 100% reliable, another is junk and ramming rounds into the ramp. A different style mag wouldn't change that imo.
R&D efforts went in to produce the Canadian version, what I meant is I would have preferred if they spent their effort in making a Canadian version utilizing the military QBZ design, mag style included. 5.8 is not that big a re-design from 5.56. Obviously they would have had to re-engineer the feed ramp to make it work, they should've focused on making the gun run reliably with 5.56. But instead they focused on making it accept AR mags (but not reliably) which also butchered the original mag release and manual of arms.
And in this latest up-version, they again focused on the top rail instead of updating something like the safety location to where the current real QBZ already has done.
I understand the market conditions, they did what the Canadian public cared about most, i.e. AR mags and top rail. Just in my own personal opinion not the most appealing decisions. I know full well I am in the minority, but not alone.
IMHO the real latest gen Chinese QBZ is a decent service rifle, the Canadian civvie T-97 is not a well baked or faithful enough imitation.
Last edited:
You realize they were selling 5.56 T-97s long before they came to the Canadian market, right?
Yeah you called me out. Does not make it a better decision where to sink R&D money though, maybe even worse.
Imagine if your are not just a Canuck plinker, which means your might not be handicapped at 5rd with whatever mag style anyway.
Would you request them to put their money in making it accept STANAG with a new mag well and release but is finicky and have to go through stack of mags to find one that works?
Or, would you rather they spend that same effort into making it work with 5.56 in the original style mags but make sure its reliable?
But that's what I'm saying, it was the opposite. They had the design already, they had been building them for years, no R&D required. They gave us what they already had.
I've had two rifles from 2 different generations and they all worked fine with every steel/aluminum USGI mag I've shoved into them, which is what they were meant for. 5 minutes with a hand file made them both compatible with every polymer mag I had as well. Any problems that plagued the first 2013 batch seem to have been sorted.
I meant it was a bad call when they first decided to pursue that design.
It would have been cool, but if their target was foreign governments who had stockpiles of magazines for their old M16s, it makes a lot of sense to go the route they did.
Agree, obviously it made some biz sense to the two parties at the time.
Just stating my personal technical preference if I were procuring, I know the real $ world does not work that way.
Just look at our CF-18 saga.
They were rushed to finish the development - so they could showcase it in the 97 handover of Hong Kong.
There is an improved version with thumb safety shown back in 2010, but what it was shown might not mean what they ended up en mass.
The QBZ-95-1 is what is in general issue now, with the thumb safety selector and a rear sight adjustable for windage (instead of drifting the front sight) as well as a lower carry, and bolt catch with exterior controls. (Right behind the mag well, kinda like a Tavor). A much better design.
It'd be awesome if we could get those but I'm not holding my breath.
Travis Bickle
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Upper Lower Middle Alberta
Why did they massacre the T97 so badly before making them and shipping them here?
Why did they not just keep all controls and function identical but with semi auto only guts and shell?
It could have had so much potential sadly
Now this is what it should have been day one. Nice.
They didn't. We got the 5.56 variant of the first gen QBZ-95s which they had been producing for export for years. Most of their army still uses something similar to what we have, until the 95-1 can be phased in. As far as I can tell, a "T-97-1" with all the upgrades simply does not exist, and likely will not exist, as their attempts to export the QBZ to military buyers has flopped.
I think part of what he meant was that the original QBZ uses rock in style mag not the straight insert STANAG.
