What’s Cooking at Inter Ordnance

1. But how does one resolve/repair a tarnished reputation from the past?

   • That’s a tough one. I had an I.O. from before they moved to Florida and it was almost just fine. The dust cover was too tight (meaning the rear trunnion was pushed to far forward the front trunnion was too far back by a small fraction of an inch.) The assembler would have had to have used a mallet to get the rear part to lock into place. I had to dremel off some material from the front of the dust cover and then it was a great gun thereafter. But I resented that they sent me a rifle they knew during assembly wasn’t up to snuff.

     I’m personally willing to forgive them and give them a pass, I’ve often looked at their website checking out their new lines. I’d be willing to buy from them again under their promises that things are much better now.

   • Honest question….

     For AK’s ….is there a company with a worse reputation than IO Inc?

   • The problem with IO is that not only they sold guns and components that didn’t function reliably – they sold those that were outright dangerous to handle. Read this and weep:

     http://www.akfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151896

     Personally, after a company does something like this, I don’t want to have any business with them ever again. Unless maybe it literally is the whole new company under old brand.

     Oh, and the reputation is not all past, either. Here’s a relatively recent thread, where the responses of the IO Inc guy will probably make you facepalm more than once:

     http://www.akfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=210340

2. I don’t know of 20 years at Taurus is a good thing to have in your resume. Sounds like qualities getting ready to drop production starting to go up and the bottom line is the dollar Which mostly hurt small businesses that build a high quality product one rifle at a time Whereas this spell is used to building thousands of guns at a time and if 100 or so are messed up so be at the customer can always send it back. I’m a Gunsmith in Florida And Torres has left a very bad taste in my mouth and I highly recommend people stay away from them. In my personal opinion there just junk. Some people I know we’re going to come back and be like oh my tours works great this that and the other well yeah some of them do but a large percent of them do not.

   • “Sounds like qualities getting ready to drop…”

     If their reputation is only half true, I.O.’s quality can’t drop much further.

     “Which mostly hurt small businesses that build a high quality product one rifle at a time…”

     This was never I.O.’s business model.

3. TaurusCorrection on the spelling of that voice text sucks on this phone

4. THIS isn’t about Taurus(or Torres) Jim-keep up. I honestly have NO idea how anyone can fix the IO rep…No love on the several FB gun groups I view…

5. So what I just read was that a gun company, trying to improve a less than stellar reputation, had a publicity shoot with their guns, one of which catastrophically failed and others that had lots of other problems. Is there anything else important that I should have read there? Because all I came away with was, don’t buy these guns, they still suck.

   • When you can’t get your own hand picked guns to work on your own terms, it doesn’t bode well for your product line.

     • You can always try blaming the ammo…

6. Would never buy an IO gun :/

   • …and as a dealer I will never resell their guns. I definitely wasn’t impressed with their dealer pricing or customer service.

7. Not encouraging. I think I would give the C39 V2 a whirl before this stuff.

8. TTAG: no one cares what I.O. has cooking. They make shit tier guns that make Century Arms look stellar.

9. TTAG, thanks for this.

   It provides an interesting view as to what happens at company-sponsored events. And I can see how some of the dead-tree magazines would be tempted, for the sake of advertising dollars, to just leave out the bad bits entirely, or just include a token sentence like “one or two small mechanical issues.” Which by know I know to translate as “catastrophic failure happens” (as per jwtaylor a few posts up).

10. IO makes the worst AKs you can get on the market. In fact, many of them won’t last more than 1-2 magazines. At worst, they will blow up in your face. They provide a product that combines the worst production methods (Cast Bolts for Christ’s sake) with horrible quality customer service. Their AKs are awful, and it would be better if you never mentioned them again.

    • Stop holding back and tell us how you really feel 🙂

11. I bought an I.O. from Buds not long ago. I am pleased with it and have put 300 rounds through it. There are cast parts, but the only part that could even make me think might not be a good idea is the Carrier, not the bolt (Dracon1211) The Bolt is milled. I know castings on a rifle may not be the traditional way of doing metallurgy however, there are parts that I don’t see it as a problem. I know I will catch hell for this post, and I know my experience is mine alone, but I am enjoying this rifle and will keep shooting it and looking for problems. Until I find one I will support them. If I find one, I will have a first hand account of a failure of their RMA process and depending on how things go, I will be sure to be vocal about it.

    As an aside, stuff breaks! I have had to send many guns back to manufacturers for repairs. Mossberg, Ruger, Smith, Springfield are all guns I own and have had to return. Milsurp guns like SKS and homemade AR’s don’t have anyone to send back to. I own an SKS and 3 AR’s and if one of them break, I am stuck repairing it myself. If this one breaks, I will give the manufacturer the benefit of the doubt and work through their RMA process.

    I know this doesn’t conform to the forum warriors experience, but it is my story and I am sticking to it.

    • I did mean the carrier.

      I appreciate you sharing your experience, but I’ve already seen more come IO’s back to the shop than we’ve sold. So many broken parts. Firing pins, rails, improper headspacing, etc. In fact, far more of those in the past year than Century WASRs and Yugos. I hope things work well for you.

      • bought my first ar 15 low profile my friend doug bought a dpms panther me of coarse i had to buy the io shot it 3 times would not cycle check found the gas block very loose moved a 1/4 inch fixed shot 10 shots stopped gas block ok found the trigger pin almost coming out pushed it back in fell out again i also noticed the but stock locking loose not nerled sent it back to io they repaired seams to be ok what bother me is manager signed and in spectated it and another manager signed off on it [ JP]

12. I bought an AKM 247 this Summer and it’s my first AK. I put about 375 rounds through it so far all of which was steel cased fmj. My only complaint was the short sight radius of the AK platform. So I remedied this with a Tech Sights cover with peep sight. I haven’t shot past 100 yds but with the iron sights it hits the 6″ plate every time. I’ve seen some pretty crude AK’s and really liked that it was not a parts gun and made in the USA. Oh and I put the Magpul furniture on it too. With a Limited Lifetime Warranty how can I go wrong?

13. My local gun store has a ton of IO AKs in stock. The rack is still full, so it doesn’t look like they sell well. It could be that people know about the IO quality issues. They look like nice rifles but, I would be very suspect if the press release guns couldn’t even put on a good show. The negatives seem pretty high on forums and gun groups.

    Now, I know people like to throw CAI around as crap, and their earlier stuff was pretty hit or miss. I wouldn’t own anything Century made from a few years ago without being able to shoot a few mags through it and thoroughly inspect it. I currently own a VZ 2008 and it has been a flawless, well made rifle. I love that rifle a lot! Sub 2 inch accuracy at 100 yards, and zero malfunctions in about 1000 rounds.They seem to have done a good job of pulling themselves out of the pits of super suck. It is still buyer beware on their older builds. I would have no problems buying a VZ, C308, C39 or RAS47 from Century.

    • From what I’ve seen, AK-pattern or CETME rifles assembled before 2011 are still suspect, and I’d certainly do a thorough inspection before buying one. Though lately I’ve been into a couple shops that take great umbrage at any requests to do so.
      But in the last five years or so, CAI’s quality-control & workmanship has gotten a lot better; evidently the monkeys-with-mallets who were building AKs for them finally got put back in their cages.

      • I think PETA opened their cages and let the monkeys go free.

        I agree with your assessment on anything pre 2011 is suspect. I wouldn’t mind seeing a factory walk through or a walk through of the companies that they contract to build their rifles.

      • I own a shop in fl. And I can tell you that,depending on how you attempt your “inspection” I would probably have a problem with it as well…and I’ll explain why.
        You have no idea how many times when I was a new dealer I would let someone do a field strip of a firearm after being asked, only to be left re assembling the firearm myself….ask the clerk to do it. If he can’t…you’re in the wrong shop.
        Oh, and I will not sell I.O. firearms,period. Centurys quality has improved enough in the last half decade that I can still sell AKs with milled carriers at the same price as that inter ordinance junk.
        On last peice of advice…buy a Saiga.

    • Who is your “local gun shop”?
      Thanks,
      DaveW4DN

14. They are in-fact parts guns sourced from Eastern European surplus kits. They manufacture them by adding a few US made parts so that the guns are 922r compliant. This allows them to sell the guns as “Made in the USA” when they are nonetheless com-block “parts guns”.

15. Not an AK but their Hellcat 380 only lasted a year. Try to give one away. The thing practically fell apart when I held one 3 or 4 years ago. And it was just a clone of the Keltec p3at…

16. The problem with these rifles is the fact that they use cast parts where there should be forgings and with that being said they have painting issues after only 500 rounds or so it is in my best opinion to avoid any product made by inter ordnance due to the fact that they cut corners on some of the most important things I have seen lugs shear off of bolts improper headspacing from the factory and even one gun with a rivet that wasn’t even crushed on the inside so please stay away from them and that some of the new stuff that has the Florida address on the receiver

    • Completely agree Joel. It’s a serious responsibility to manufacture firearms. Cutting corners when you make ice cream scoopers is one thing, but improperly heat treating receivers and using sub-standard cast parts on a rifle is irresponsible at best. I don’t know how that company continues to survive, but then again, High Point is still around. Hosting a writer event only to have numerous and serious failures says it all especially when you’re making a 60+ year old designed gun that many consider to be the most reliable rifle ever conceived. AK’s made in mud huts in third world countries work better. Good thing that they’re on the “Space Coast” with NASA guys building their crap.

      • Space Cadets

17. I loved the history and look about the PPS43 so much that I hardly didn’t care if the thing ran or not.
    True to form with IO Inc, it’s a jam-o-matic.
    But I still grin ear to ear every time I take it out of the safe to show to somebody.
    Maybe in the distant future I’ll find enough time to try to make it run better.

18. The lowest quality firearm I’ve ever handled was an IO Inc CASAR AK. I shook it and it rattled like you wouldn’t believe. A couple more shakes and some sort of pin came falling out of the receiver. I laughed and handed back the rifle. The rivets were sticking out, the sights were canted, and it looked like it had been spot welded by Hellen Keller.

    Look up that model of rifle and read some of the horror stories from people who actually attempted to fire it.

19. Am I the only one who finds it amusing that a guy can build a functioning AK out of an old shovel in his garage, but IO can’t even get their hand-picked press event guns to run well? I mean, seriously, the one thing that the AK is supposed to have going for it is that it’s reliable.

    • My m247t made it to 80 rounds before starting to bump fire 2 to 3 rounds 3 each pull of the trigger. The trigger and trigger coil rivets both came loose out to 2mm! Unsafe rifle at most!

20. I see they dropped production of the Hellcat .380 pistol… I have one and the bore came from them looking like it was made with a cold chisel and the barrel hood developed scratches from burs on the slide interface The original MIM extractors broke repeatedly..magazine issues.. nice. Now no parts no support… lifetime warranty is useless if production stops and parts are no longer made or available… No thank you to I.O.

    • Thanks for backing me up-and they weren’t marketed like a Lorcin, JA or other zinc ring of fire junk. They got “positive” sometimes glowing reviews in the mainstream gun media too. Thank you TTAG for real objective non-whore reviews…

      • Uli Weigand the owner of I.O. must have has the guys at Gunblast.com in his pocket… They made these POS sound like they were a great buy for the $$. Instead try and sell one! Walk into a gunstore with an I.O Hellcat and tell them you’d like to sell/trade your Hellcat and wait for their response…..Oh you own one of those…..hmm, I’m sorry but we do not have any interest in that pistol…. too many problems and no parts to fix them…Can I help you with buying a good quality handgun, let me know….

        • Any body know anything about Weigand? I wonder how many guns they sell per year or if they’re even able to pay their bills. I’m surprised that they have stayed in business.

          • Just curious, WASR and Century were putting out crap parts guns and now they seem to be the gold standard. Are the haters willing to ever give them a chance again?

        • Some of the things that IO did make Century look like Krebs.

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