I did a lot of searching and head-scratching about this one, so my hope here is that someone else will find this tip useful down the road.  I have to imagine I'm not the only person wanting to stick a .308 in a Kushnapup stock.

I didn't know going into this project that the Saiga 308 has a factory trigger that's different from the rest of the Saigas.  The good thing is it doesn't have the Rube Goldberg monstrosity of linkages the other Saigas have, but the bad thing is it has a REALLY long trigger that has a back-and-up pull, rather than a straight-back pull.

When you combine that back-and-up with the straight-back pull of the Kushnapup's trigger linkage, the geometry of the interface with the factory trigger gets really weird.  As the nylon bushing pushes back against the Saiga's trigger, the trigger rides up and decreases the angle and increases the friction.  The amount of force necessary to get this thing to break was absolutely unacceptable.

Trigger set:


This is where it would break:


As you can see in that last pic, the trigger would ride WAY up on the bushing, to the point where the last bit before it broke the trigger was curving forward again.  It felt TERRIBLE.

A lot of head-scratching and I figured out that if I moved the bushing up and forward a little bit, it could ride higher and actually use the curve of the trigger as it moved up and back as an advantage.  I drilled and tapped a new hole (should have been a little farther forward) and used a smaller outer-diameter nylon bushing so it would fit in the higher position.



Since I kind of eyeballed the whole thing, I wound up having to remove some material from the bushing so the trigger could swing forward far enough to completely reset.



Here's where the bushing/trigger interface is when the trigger breaks now.



Feels SO much better this way.  It's still a Saiga trigger with a bullpup linkage, but it's not like, "OHMYFUCKINGGOD, IS MY FINGER OR THE TRIGGER GOING TO BREAK FIRST?!?!?" like it was to start with.

Anyway, hopefully this helps someone at some point.

pics of the whole thing?

And why didn't you just install a regular AK trigger in it? That Saiga .308 trigger requires an upward pull which only works from the monte carlo stock that comes on it. It's total crap. And if you take it out and look at it, it is clear designed and intended to be discarded in the trash can upon replacement.

Oh, post a pic of the completed rifle also.

I didn't convert it to regular AK configuration because the Kushnapup stock was designed around Saiga's stock trigger placement in the far rear of the receiver.   It wouldn't even fit in the stock with a normal AK trigger.

And yes, I'll be posting photos of the completed gun once I get a couple more parts on it.  :)

Quick pic of the completed build:

neat

How about replacing the nylon bushing with a bearing? Not an answer for the shitty angle on the trigger, but may reduce the friction.

That's cool. Would be a great woods pig hammer.