Improving Your FEG PA63

D

D Crockett

New member
Dear Interested Readers,

While most of my pistols are fairly high-end,
I could not pass up a PA63 w/ 2 mags for $100.

Just wanted to pass along a few things I did that didn't cost anything and helped make it a good little carry piece.

The double action pull was a litle stiff so I cut one coil out of the hammer spring(hoping it wouldn't affect ignition), smoothed and polished all parts of the internal mechanism, and reasembled it w/ a good dry lithium lubricant on all working parts. This greatly improved the trigger and has not affected reliable ignition at all.

While apart, I also polished the sear and hammer contact points which improved the already decent single action trigger pull.

I then took my dremel tool and rounded and polished all the sharp edges on the frame(the slide didn't really need it). I also opened up the top rear of the grip area as it bit my hand a little when shooting.
While I had it apart, I took the frame to a friends shop who rebuilds starters and alternators. He has a bead-blasting cabinet he uses to refinish alternator tops. He let me use it to bead-blast the alloy frame which gave it a beautiful finished look.

I tried to find new grips for it but couldn't,so I ground down and smoothed the sharp edge of the thumb rest on the left grip panel and this makes it more comfortable to carry IWB.

The pistol looks great now and shoots well w/ no jambs and good accuracy. It's a great little $100 piece that carries well and if it
gets stolen from a car, you haven't lost much.

The last thing I want to do is put some better sights on it. I'm thinking of putting on an Ashley Express front bead and
bevelling the existing rear sight into a V.
Has anyone had any experience w/ adding sights to this pistol?

Just wanted to let other PA 63 owners know it's not hard to improve this little piece w/out much trouble. Hope it helps someone.

Dave
 
I just got myself an FEG PMK imported by KIB (KBI?), which I think is essentially a 380 caliber PA-63 like yours.

I don't think I've got your gunsmith skills to do my own trigger job, but I was wondering what tip you used in your Dremel tool to round the rough edges on the trigger. Felt, stone? Did you have to re-blue afterwards?

I was also thinking about filing the rear sight notch to a rectangular shape, putting a dot of paint on the front sight, and a vertical bar of point under the rear notch (to dot the i). I'm interested in other possible sight enhancements, too. An older post I read (after a site search) suggested just painting the front sight orange and sighting the piece like a shotgun (close range defense)!

Thanks for your post.
 
Wow that's alot of work on a $100 piece, but if it works, cool.

I pretty much left mine as-is out of the box with the exception of the orange paint andy desribed above. ( I can shoot tennis ball sized groups of 5 at 15 yards with it) Skinnier grip panels would be really nice but probably can't be imported on the pistol (wonder of feg/kbi has STOCK grip panels laying around?) or conversly you can make sheet metal spacers to widen the grip if you prefer.

I think a cool site modification (as well as an inexpensive one) would be tp grind OFF the front site and replace it with a bright orange shotgun bead (of course you then make the gun into a point-shooter ONLY), but let's face it a ccw gun probably won't be fired at 25 yards, more like 3-5.

my 2¢

Dr.Rob

[This message has been edited by Dr.Rob (edited December 14, 1999).]
 
AndyP,
I didn't actually work on the trigger itself
but only the frame and grip when rounding edges. On the alloy frame, I used a round sanding tip on the first pass and then a soft
stone tip to smooth it out. I didn't have to re-blue it as it wasn't origionally blue
and the bead blasting left a very nice finish
(and also smoothed out any dremel traces).

Dr. Rob,
It really only took about 2 hours to do most of the work w/ a sander and dremel tool, then another 20 minutes at my friends shop
doing the bead blasting.
I also thought it would be neat to grind off the front sight and install some bead-type
sight. I called Ashley Outdoors and talked
to their smith. The big dot front sight
they sell for the Walther PPK requires a
dovetail to be cut in the slide, which costs
$50 plus $30 for the sight. I asked him
if I could just grind the front sight down
and drill a hole and mount their Glock-type
big dot that uses a tenon connection. He
said that would work and I ordered a standard
sized big dot front sight today for $30.
I will bevel the existing rear sight into
a V and see how it works. I'll try to let
you know, if you'd like.

Dave
 
I'm so envious of you Dave. I can't even bake a cake much less smooth out a pistol.

------------------
So many pistols, so little money.

[This message has been edited by Tecolote (edited December 14, 1999).]
 
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