This has been a long time coming. I sold the krinker kit this 10/22 was originally in back in the summer of 2008.
I had planned to make a new shorty 10/22 with the FS556 kit from Fabsports.
The plan was set back by my inability to locate a short barrel. I managed to obtain one this summer from bits of pieces (custom, bull barrel, with a match crown, 11.5" with threaded end for AR birdcages). This was not an inexpensive barrel (more than 300$), but it was worth it.
I ordered everything else from Fabrice at Fabsports.ca.
I know that praises of Fabrice are fairly routine on this board, but it cannot be said enough how good he is to deal with. I did have one hiccup, he sent the requested quotes to the wrong email address (sorry fabs, I managed to re-activate it this weekened and there they were). That said, Fabrice went the extra mile, sending it as a PM to me here instead. Service was prompt, and shipping was quick and without incident. He also notified me when an out of stock part arrived, and shipped it quickly and efficiently once I confirmed I still wanted it. This was weeks later, which speaks to good organization. As someone who worked for a small business it can be a real hassle to keep on top of back orders! So Kudos for that.
The FS kit worked well. The trigger / grip design is well executed, and in my opinion better than the nordic (which I also own). The kit fits very well (though I had to remove my commando bolt handle because it won't fit the frame). The one thing I did not like was that the threading for the forearm has to be removed to remove the barrel. This is also true on the Nordic, but the Nordic is designed to remove that part with two bolts, whereas the FS556 takes 5 bolts. They are long bolts, and unless you have a lot of allen key sets you might not have the right size, as they were a little unusual sized. Only one of my sets fit, and it wasn't the normal L keys, it was the ones in the swiss army knife style sets. That made it very difficult to both remove and reinstall.
However, once it was back and in, the rest of it put together, it was very tight and fit very well.
The ARFX-E stock arrived today, and that part was somewhat unique to install. The hole for the stock at the bottom did not align with the FS kit. I'm not sure which was the problem, the stock or the FS kit, but it was easily fixed by a little bit of filing of the hole on the FS kit, to enlarge the bottom of the hole. Took less than 5 minutes with a small hand file. Now it fits very tight, and I doubt I could remove it if I wanted.
All told I'm very impressed with both the fit of everything and the service I recieved. Top marks all around.
