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Thoughts on a Valkyrie Arms M3 Grease Gun


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Thoughts on a Valkyrie Arms M3 Grease Gun? Thanks in Advance. I have the opportunity to purchase an early Valkyrie Arms M3 Grease Gun Carbine with a fixed wire stock.

 

- What do folks think of them?

- What do you think they are worth?

 

Basically my brother-in-law is disposing of an estate of a friend of his and he knows where my interests lay. The semi is basically like new, almost no wear 95% or better.

 

Tempted to purchase, just not certain. The semi's I have not in the past have been a let down, IMA UZI, ATI 9mm GSG MP-40; don't compare to my real Class 3 SMGs, looking t use it for reenacting possibly vs taking out a real SMG.

 

Paul

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A couple of weeks ago I spoke to a gent here in town who has one of Val's M3 semi-auto's.
He is a re-enactor and had video of the gun at the range.
He had to have it rebuilt to get it to run reliably.
The person who did the work made the comment that the design was sound but the work was poorly executed.

I have never examined one myself, I am just relaying what I heard.

Richard

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Likewise I have heard folks say that they do not work, especially the early ones. PM Kilroy. He has one and his does not work. He also was very unsatisfied with assistance from them in getting it fixed. Don't over pay for it.

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A friend of mine purchased 3 of them from the manufacturer several years ago. Had to wait quite a while to get them, but they all ran fine right out of the box and always have. I suspect that might be the exception. I agree with Sandman-- if you can get it for a deal, maybe.

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Likewise I have heard folks say that they do not work, especially the early ones. PM Kilroy. He has one and his does not work. He also was very unsatisfied with assistance from them in getting it fixed. Don't over pay for it.

 

As Sandman says, I have one and despise it. I bought it kind of a knee-jerk reaction because I saw someone was making semi-auto Grease Guns and I had to have one. So, I hurried up, said "TAKE MY MONEY" and did not do any research on them before. When I spoke to them regarding the deposit on the piece they said it would be about two months before it shipped. Then delay after delay and excuse after excuse the thing finally arrived about a year later. It was really worrisome because in that year time frame there were countless excuses and then phone calls just were not getting returned and eventually voicemail boxes were full and unable to leave messages. Also, during this time frame I began researching Valkyrie Arms and there online reputation that I could find was not good. It actually made me think I had jumped feet first into a scam. Then, one day it just showed up to my FFL, no notice of shipping, no insurance, no tracking nothing. It just arrived and my FFL who is a buddy of mine is like "hey this ray gun looking thing just got here for you". Well isn't that nice. I got excited and emotional again and essentially the day I got it home submitted the Form 1 to SBR it before even firing the thing.... another expensive lesson learned.

 

Anyways... I finally got to the range with the thing and after about two magazines the thing locked up. I mean locked up tight. The bolt went forward on a live round and was so jammed tight I struggled getting the bolt back. I eventually got the thing open and the round ejected and I assumed there was a bad round or something so I tried again. And again... locked up. Disassembling the piece isn't that easy... I mean it is, but it isn't. It is held together with a set screw that holds the barrel assembly on the receiver and then two pins that hold the lower to the upper tube receiver. The upper and lower are fit together excessively tight and takes beating them with a block of wood to loosen them and get them apart. It appears that the trigger assembly is a generic sort of AR trigger group.

 

Going back to my jamming problems, I seemed to notice a lot of brass filings in the bolt, feed ramps etc. I assumed that this was because the extractor was taking a bight out of the brass casing and causing a little chunk to come off every time and then those filings would build up and lock up the piece. These filings were also getting into the firing pin hole and jamming it so the firing pin would not go forward through the bolt and again causing fail to fires. I posted about it a lot on here, asking for help and many people offered different ideas and I tried several of them but none of them work. I took it to an 'old-school' gunsmith who looked at the piece and did what he could to polish the feed ramps (that was another problem, many times a round would fail to feed out of the magazine into the chamber [forgive me, the more I type the more I remember whats wrong with this thing]). and he determined that the firing pin was made out of a soft metal and the tip of the firing pin was bent and mushroomed. This bend/mushroom combination prevented the firing pin from moving when those brass shavings built up in the firing pin hole. So, he made a new firing pin, oil-quenched it and all. He made it slightly bigger so that way it filled up more of the firing pin hole and would hopefully stop the shavings from working their way inside the bolt. Unfortunate, next time I took it to the range, it was more of the same. It ran ok for one magazine but then after that it starting having fail to feeds, fail to fire, just overall failure. That was the last time I fired it, or took it out. It has sat in the safe since then.

 

I have tried calling Valkyrie and asking them about this thing but about the half dozen times I called it was the same thing. No answer, mailbox full. I don't know what to do with it from here. I've probably got $2,000 sunk into the paperweight with the initial cost ($1,400 or $1,500 I can't remember off the top of my head), Form 1 ($200), barrel chop, extra part buying and gunsmith costs. I don't know how much I really want to dump into it as it is a novelty (more of a show piece and not like a 'favorite firearm' or anything) and I don't know what it would be worth - like is there any resale value? Does anyone want a semi-auto Grease Gun? I am also ignorant on the selling process of a short barreled rifle.

 

Here is a picture of mine, the barrel is threaded for a suppressor but I use the flash hider as a barrel protector. I run my Ti-Rant 45 can on it and it is super quiet.

 

 

 

http://www.biggerhammer.net/photography/mgboard/others/Kilroys_GreaseGun_BasicEditExample.jpg

 

This is not me, but obviously some people get theirs to work, I don't know if they had to work on it to make it work, or if it worked out of the box. This video is not me, I wish mine would work this good.

 

 

Any questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Edited by Kilroy
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There is value in anything like this. You don't have to sell it as an SBR if you get a longer barrel for it, or sell it without a barrel you can sell the gun as title 1 without doing any additional paperwork. Hopefully you marked the barrel with your info, that will make it more saleable. Certainly someone will buy it, for what price I don't know?

The market is huge for guys that want a cheaper gun that doesn't work vs. top dollar for a fully working gun (of which any valkyrie is unlikely to be in this class). A friend of mine calls it "selling the dream". Got a screaming deal.....just needs a little work. Those are the guys with parts kits that they think will be a complete gun someday. Probably less than 10% of those become reality.

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