From Junk to Glory: How to Rebuild an Old Uzi

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Online gun auctions are my kryptonite. All the bidding is done automatically. You just put in whatever you’re willing to pay, and the computer does the rest. I’ve gotten into some great guns that way.

This is the digital age, so true bargains can be rare. Everybody with an Internet connection can ascertain a gun’s relative worth with a few keystrokes. The days of scooping up some barn find for pennies on the dollar are over. However, there are still some great opportunities to be found for the discriminating gun nerd with a few bucks to burn.

Opportunities

When an auction has multiples of common guns, sometimes you can catch one that goes cheap. You often have to gauge condition based upon some suboptimal pictures. However, if you’re looking for working guns, you can tell enough. 

Really spendy examples frequently go for less than market. I recently followed an estate auction that sold half a dozen .50AE Desert Eagles for about a grand apiece. That’s obviously a lot of money, but it’s less than you’d pay for them elsewhere. I didn’t much need a 4.5-pound handgun the size of a hubcap, so I passed. The other reliable opportunity is to be found in guns with a checkered past.

The appeal of customized firearms is in the eye of the beholder. You can drop a holy fortune tricking out a tactical firearm and transform it into something only its creator could love. I once tripped over an open-bolt semiauto MAC that had been thusly ravaged with a side-cocking upper, weird barrel extension, and clunky pistol brace. I bought the gun, stripped off the irreplaceable lower receiver, binned the rest, and built the gun up using an original demilled SMG parts kit. The final creation was a 1982-vintage open-bolt collectible at a fraction of the market price.

Uzi Does It

Similarly, I recently discovered an Uzi with which someone had taken some serious liberties. The receiver began life as a Group Industries semiauto rifle. Back in the 1980’s, a businessman named Mike Brown built a set if stamping dies and started banging out domestically-produced Uzi receivers. 4,000 of these receivers ended up as transferable machineguns registered prior to the 1986 machinegun ban. He produced a further 20,000 semiauto receivers, though a relative few of them were actually built into workable firearms.

There was an acrimonious business split, and most of these full and semiauto receivers were purchased by Vector Arms for final assembly. There were some dimensional issues with these American receivers and foreign-sourced parts, but most of that got ironed out prior to sale. Group-marked guns are generally respected for their quality and reliability. Curiously, Brown named his gun the Model HR4332. HR 4332 is the number of the bill that outlawed manufacture of machineguns for sale to individuals in America. The semiauto versions are called, appropriately enough, the HR4332S. 

Modification Nation

This particular Uzi seemed to be in great shape. However, the previous owner had most thoroughly had his way with it. The gun was all but unrecognizable from its original factory state.

The folding buttstock was gone and lost as were the original GI handguards. The gun sported an aftermarket vertical foregrip and a weird barrel shroud to conceal its abominable 16-inch long barrel. This barrel shroud had been wrapped in some sort of black cloth-based tape, presumably as a heat shield. Ick.

Additionally, somebody had drilled a couple of holes slightly off-center in the back end of the top cover and mounted up an ad hoc optics mount. I get it. Red dot sights make any tactical gun better. However, this wasn’t some 21st-century Information Age range toy. This gun had the potential to be resurrected into a semiauto representation of the classic submachine gun that helped save the burgeoning state of Israel. All it would take is a little love. 

Parts

I landed the gun at a good price. With the buyer’s premium, it ended up being about 50 to 60% of what an otherwise-unmolested Group/Vector Uzi might set me back on GunBroker. To do this up right, I was going to need a new top cover, a buttstock, a short barrel, and a GI barrel nut. Fortunately, I had a demilled Uzi parts kit in my junk stash.

If you see demilled guns that might someday tickle your fancy for sale at a good price, you need to jump on that. I landed this Uzi kit for about $200 back when they were just super cheap. The same thing runs about $600 today. The parts I needed did have some honest mileage on them. 

Before you proceed, you need to register the receiver as a short-barreled rifle. I have my own 07/02 manufacturer’s FFL (not as tough as you might think), so it was easy to do tax-free. After January 1, 2026, we will all be able to do this for free from home via a BATF Form 1. With that form approved, the world is your oyster.

It takes a discriminating gun nerd to understand Uzi barrels. Most but not all semiauto Uzis have a two-part restrictor mechanism in place to prevent you from installing a short machinegun barrel. The semiauto trunnion sports a slightly smaller hole than does the factory full auto sort. Most semiauto receivers also have an annoying restrictor ring welded in place at the breech end. The obvious solution in this case would have been to just cut down the long barrel that came with the gun. However, these semiauto long barrels are kind of spendy, and I might someday want to deregister the gun and sell it as a semiauto rifle. As a result, I just ordered a short 10.2-inch barrel turned to semiauto specs from Pike Arms online. If you have access to a metal lathe it is a fairly straightforward chore to turn an original GI barrel down to fit using the long semiauto barrel as a guide. With all the parts in-hand, it was time for a little mechanical surgery.

Transformations

Stripping the receiver down takes no talent. The semiauto conversion for all Uzi variants uses the original selective fire trigger housing with the full auto position blocked, usually by a little welded tab. The semiauto bolt assembly employs a separate spring-loaded striker as well as a blocky rubber buffer in the back. This whole rig is fairly complicated, but it runs from the closed bolt for legality and is typically completely reliable.

The factory foregrips mounts up with a standard screwdriver. The buttstock attaches via a generous hex nut. The barrel is a drop-in fit. The top cover took a little more effort. For whatever reason, the factory top cover would not lock in place at the rear. To remedy that, I very gently shaved a little steel off in the back with a cutoff wheel on my Dremel tool. This left a slight bevel to the rear aspect of the cover that allowed the retention latch to pop over the top and secure it in place. Easy peazy.

The original full auto top cover includes an interesting ratchet mechanism designed to prevent the gun from firing if incompletely cocked or dropped on its butt from a height. If mounted on a semiauto gun, this top cover will irretrievably lock the bolt to the rear. Fixing that demands you remove the top cover carefully and let the bolt bits crash back in place under spring pressure. Ask me how I know this…

Rectifying this involves removing the charging handle from the inside using a standard screwdriver. Take this assembly apart and remove the little ratchet before reassembling everything else. Leave the spring in place, as it’s not bothering anything. That all sounds complicated, but it’s not.

Refinishing the old parts isn’t hard if the worn look bothers you. Degrease everything thoroughly and spray them down with flat black engine block paint from your local auto parts store. This stuff is less than ten bucks a can at my Auto Zone. This finish has to be baked for proper durability, but that’s not hard either. 

DO NOT USE YOUR WIFE’S OVEN! Sorry to shout, but this is important. Cook gun parts in your kitchen oven and everything you ever eat will taste vaguely like an Indian battery factory. Invest in a cheap toaster over from Walmart and cook the parts in your garage. The directions are on the can, and the resulting finish rivals Cerakote.

It is Alive!

The end result is absolutely horrible on the range. We’ve just created an 8-pound semiautomatic 9mm short-barreled rifle. Any beater cop-surplus Glock will throw 9mm rounds just as well while remaining cheaper, lighter, and easier to tote. However, this thing is so cool.

The Uzi is the most-produced pistol-caliber submachine gun in human history. More than ten million copies have seen service. Owning a functioning semiauto replica earns some proper cool points. While the details we have discussed seem unique to this build, McKay Industries is still producing semiauto receivers at a decent price. I have built up a semiauto Uzi on a McKay receiver before. The process is essentially identical to what we have discussed here. 

If you have just a little institutional gun knowledge and a scrap of mechanical skill, legally building up a semiauto Uzi at home is on the menu. The process is fun, and the end product looks great. Getting there is indeed half the fun.

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