If you recall, I earlier posted about Dylan Trinh’s .22LR conversion for the IWI X95 Tavor. Well, he sent me his one-off prototype to check out. My X95 is the second gun to test this conversion kit. So there were some issues that I helped to diagnose. While I helped test his conversion kit, just know it is a prototype and has room for improvement. But I can certainly share with you how it is so far.
.22LR Conversion Kits @ TFB:
- Homemade Drop-In IWI Tavor .22LR X95 Conversion
- The Rimfire Report: HK91 Conversion Kit – It Shoots .22LR
- TFB Review: Nelson Custom Guns .22LR 1911 Conversion Kit
Trinh’s .22LR Conversion Kit For The IWI X95
Dylan Trinh’s .22LR conversion kit is a heavily modified CMMG conversion kit for an AR-15. Below you can see my unmodified CMMG kit (top) next to Dylan’s modified conversion bolt.
First off, you can see he decked the top of the recoil spring channel.
Next up, he narrowed the recoil spring tube to clear the X95 hammer.
The recoil spring tube is also too wide in most places so that too was narrowed.
Even the sides of the CMMG bolt were milled to fit the X95.
Since the X95 hammer is longer and wider, Trinh’s .22LR conversion bolt has a longer and wider section cut out of the CMMG carrier. Also, parts of the bottom of the CMMG bolt have been milled away.
The rear of Trinh’s .22LR conversion carrier has a piece of metal that is epoxied on and shaped to hold the rear of the carrier inside the X95.
Below: X95 bolt and carrier above Trinh’s .22LR conversion bolt.
Here is the rear of Trinh’s .22LR conversion bolt when installed inside the X95. No modification is required of the X95. The charging handle functions regularly.
Not pictured is a 3D printed spacer block that is inserted behind Trinh’s .22LR conversion bolt and the stock.
Initial Problems
I installed Trinh’s .22LR conversion kit and had failure to fire malfunctions. I looked inside the ejection port and noticed the hammer was not hitting the firing pin. I called Dylan about this and he only has a Geissele Super Sabra trigger pack in his X95. He got rid of his factory trigger pack a while ago so he never tested his conversion with a factory trigger pack. The forks at the top of the factory X95 hammer are too narrow to clear the recoil spring tube.
I purchased a Geissele Super Sabra trigger pack as an immediate solution to this problem. But ran into another issue. This time it was not Dylan’s fault but Geissele’s. Look at the photo below. Look at the factory X95 trigger pack housing. It has a ledge that is lowered. Whereas the Geissele trigger pack is flat across the top, save for the section on the left. This prevents the Geissele trigger pack from dropping all the way in.
Factory X95 trigger pack on the left. Geissele Super Sabra on the right.
Fortunately, Geissele is aware of this incompatibility and would fix it under warranty. Below is the replacement Geissele trigger pack below the factory X95 trigger pack.
Sure enough, the Super Sabra hammer fork is wider.
Factory X95 hammer fork gap width.
Geissele Super Sabra hammer fork gap width.
Test Firing Trinh’s .22LR conversion kit.
Dylan test fired his conversion kit with black dog machine magazines and CMMG conversion magazines. I wanted to see if S&W M&P 15-22 magazines work with his conversion kit and they do. In the few testing videos Dylan made, I noticed a bit of movement from the magazines he used so I wanted to film Trinh’s .22LR conversion kit in slow motion. There are a couple of malfunctions of all sorts. Some of it has to do with the ammo and some of it is due to the prototype nature of the kit. There are failures to eject, where the brass does not quite make it out of the ejection port. In some cases, the brass extracts and is ejected upwards into the cavernous internals of the X95. Other times we experienced failures to feed. Regardless of these occasional hiccups, the kit does work. We used CCI Clean and some Federal ammunition when we tested the conversion kit. See the video below.
From the video, you can see the magazine rocks back and forth quite a bit. The M&P 15-22 magazine has a very short top section so that explains why there is room for the magazine to shift a bit. The CMMG mags may need to have some material added to minimize the movement. Also, in some instances, you can see the front section of the CMMG conversion kit carrier move back and forth. This is a bigger issue. In some cases, the feed ramp is hitting the feed lips of the magazines and breaking parts of the magazine tower.
Final Thoughts On Trinh’s .22LR Conversion Kit
I commend Dylan for taking on this challenge by himself. He was nice enough to lend me this kit to try out, and film in slow motion. With the video I posted above, he has a better understanding of what areas he can improve and modify to try and get his conversion kit to be more reliable. I think the movement of the carrier, the part that has the feed ramp, can be minimized. His spacer block uses a spring to keep forward pressure on the conversion bolt. However, I do not think this is necessary. I think if he makes the block the correct length there is no need for the carrier to move at all, just like in an AR-15. There is certainly room for improvement but the functionality is there. I sent back his prototype and my factory X95 trigger pack for another one of his modifications. He has worked out how to make factory X95 trigger packs be binary (pull and release). He has also worked out a way to make a forced reset trigger for the X95.
A photo Dylan sent me of my newly modified pull-release X95 trigger pack.
When Dylan makes his refinements to his .22LR conversion kit, I hope I can help him test it some more.