Hey guys, just picked up my first akm yesterday, and got a great deal from a local shop. I inspected the gun meticulously before leaving the shop mainly for stock straightness and barrel straightness. However when I got the gun home I pulled the dust cover and all the internals and looked down the stock through the recoil spring groove on the rear trunnion hoping to see straight down the barrel. Instead the barrel was slightly canted to the left. It certainly isn't terrible and definitely isnt noticeable to the naked eye. However I'm a perfectionist and get ocd over things like this. What I'm trying to decide is whether the barrel is crooked because of the front trunnion or if the rear trunnion is crooked giving me that illusion. Am I expecting too much out of a WASR10? Or is it a reasonable expectation to have this thing arrow straight.

If in any doubt, take it back and get it exchanged.
If it is off, it'll bug you as long as you own it.

If they won't take it back, contact the importer and make arrangement to return it to them for repair or replacement.

Yeah, you're right it will bug me like crazy. I'll go back to the shop and hopefully they'll work with me. If not I'll have to send it to century and have them work their "magic" LOL.

I took out the DSLR and took some good pictures of what I'm talking about. I was able to capture the clear cant in the barrel.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7452/11092003833_1bf80fd5c9_b.jpg

did you check the receiver rails to see if they run straight? that receiver could have been twisted during barrel install. pictures only show one angle so just wondering

They seem to run straight, action is pretty smooth I would figure it would be pretty stiff if the rails were off and the receiver twisted. The receiver itself seems straight. Thanks for the reply!

what's the gap on the rear of the receiver and the stock look like on both sides. Chances are if one side has more gap than the other your rear trunnion  is canted.

It's pretty hard to cant the front because it suppose to line up flush with the end of the receiver. If it doesn't it's noticeable.

Stock is straight in the rear trunnion. I've figured out the barrel is definitely crooked, I put the hammer up and looked down the barrel and it's clear that there's more room on one side of the hammer than the other. I went to the gunshop I bought it from on Tuesday. They won't let me return/exchange but they're going to send it back to century for me. Great. I'm wishing every day more and more that I just bought a Saiga and did the conversion myself and had a russian built Ak.

Did you shoot it?

Cause if the barrel was that offset, the sights won't line up and it'll be jacked.  If it shoots perfectly, it's an optical illusion and forget about it.

I stripped the gun down and took some measurements of various things, and nothing really huge. I measured the forward most rivet to the edge of the receiver on both sides and the measurement is exactly the same. So the trunnion is perfectly straight in the front of the receiver.

In this picture I measure from the bottom of the trunnion to the base of the receiver. The side that I'm measuring in this picture is actually a 1/16 difference than the other side.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2832/11161545845_62573456d4_c.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3728/11161605344_f506d55743_c.jpg

You can see in this picture that the barrel is straight in the trunnion. I also measured this. However the receiver looks a little twisted, you can see it doesn't quite look right. I think that this is my problem.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7453/11161736863_a80a0d667a_c.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2878/11161605534_4d822d7974_c.jpg

In this picture it shows the rear trunnion. The distance on the right of the rear trunnion to the rail that the bolt rides on is actually about 1/16 shorter than the other side. So the rear trunnion is canted slightly to the right. This isn't a big deal however and I don't believe it has anything to do with the barrel being crooked.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3707/11161604974_7d702518fd_c.jpg


So I'm still a bit perplexed because everything was straight and the trunnion was perfect and barrel was in perfect. The only thing like I stated is that the receiver has to be twisted or something.

Well both front and rear sights are mounted on the barrel, so I think it will shoot straight. I haven't shot it yet to avoid voiding any chance of repair. It doesn't sound like the gun shop will let me return/exchange so I guess I could go and put some rounds through it and see how it performs.

Remove the recoil spring, hand cycle the bolt carrier to see if any interference/binding caused by the receiver. If not, you probably OK.

Looks to me like the front trunion wasn't riveted in squarely. That will cause barrel cant because the barrel has to follow the trunion. The only fix for that is to remove the barrel and front trunion, weld up holes, redrill and rivet trunion, reheadspace barrel. That being said, if it functions now (although you likely don't have much lug contact on the bolt due to the trunion being offset) then shoot it and next time buy from a better builder...