Has anyone ever used a Vector V53?  What are your opinions on quality and reliability?  I am considering purchasing one of these rifles but before I plop down the $1300+$200 for SBR stamp I'd like some feedback from other owners.

Well I do not own one, but I will soon. I just shot a friends V53 SBR with his sear last weekend and it was a lot of fun. The fit and finish is great. I have a HK93 and his V53 looked just as nice as my factory one.

The gun shot great groups on semi auto and was very controlable full auto.  My only know about the V53 was that with a 8 or 10 inch barrel the gun is very loud...but that is the case with a lot of SBRs.

Soon as I come up with the $$$ I am going to buy a Vector SBR.

I have three of them.  They have very little recoil and are really fun guns.  I ran Wolf ammo through mine and all 3 had function issues.  I sent them all back to Vector for de-bugging.  They are extremely strong on customer service.  Two of the guns are still running less than perfectly but from what I hear some of these issues work out over time.  They also seem to do better with non-Wolf ammo.  I just had the engraving done and sent off the forms to SBR all 3 of them.  They will be much nicer looking once the application is approved and the fake cans are gone.

How hard is it to take the fake cans off?  Is it worth it to just buy it as a SBR?  I'm thinking that I could at least have the gun and shoot it until my Form 1 was approved then remove the can rather than wait months for the Form 4 before even getting the gun.

Also, what it involved in getting the auto sear?  Would the auto trigger groups from POF drop into the V53?  Would this require another Form 1?  

I'd suggest getting the non-SBR'd rifle like you said.  You'd have it to use until the Form 1 is approved.  From what I gather from research, the fake cans can be removed with a dremel tool.  There is a welded area that covers a pin.  Once approved for the SBR, you remove the weld with the dremel and yank the pin out with plyers.  It may be easier said that done.  I'm not going to know for another 60 days or so.

Let's see some pictures!

Just to follow up on the V53 reliability.  One of my V53s has been catching the spent case in the ejection port about every 4-6 rounds.  The other two V53s have been running great.  I saw a post over on hkpro about how to address common issues with these guns.  One of the tips was to put a cardboard shim in under the trigger pack because some of the aftermarket housings allow the parts to sit too low.  I did this on the 'bad' V53 and took it out to the range the other day to test 6 new mags (25 & 30 rounders) and also shot from two of the 40 rounders which were used when it had the issues.  The gun ran flawlessly for every single round from every mag.  I was using one round of Wolf for every 2 of the Winchester white box stuff.  I'm pretty stoked to have it running like a top.