AIMSurplus Ishapore Enfield 2A .308

[ArsenalOwner]

If any of you are on the fence about ordering one of the Ishapore Enfield .308 rifles from AIM-surplus, my advice is save your money. I ordered one two weeks ago and bought a synthetic stock for it while waiting for it to arrive in the mail. What the ad described was a rifle that would be "Bright, Clean", presumably a shooter. What I got in the mail was a rifle with a feed ramp so chewed up it will not feed a single round from the magazine. The feed ramp has a giant divot worn into it from use, and features a couple of nice horizontal gouges that are each perfectly capable of jamming a round, so unless I want to load one round in to the chamber each shot, I have purchased a $180 club.

If you navigate a few threads down you will see Willtallica's thread about his Ishapore, also from AIM-surplus. It seems his gunsmith pronounced his rifle unfirable as well, in his case because the headspace was excessively loose. I understand that half the fun of these weapons is cleaning away the grease and cheap finish and years of neglect, but if you're like me you want to be investing the time restoring a shooter not a doorstop.

Did any others out there order one of these .308 Enfields from Aim-surplus? If so, did you get a wallhanger like myself, or a rifle in usable condition? It seems that if this company is selling inoperable Enfields then they should mention it in the online ad.

This picture does not really show how deep the gouges are in the feed ramp, but even with the matching serial magazine (which has good feed lips), the rifle jams when loading from the mag.