With all of this out of the way, it was time to tackle the task which I’d been dreading up to this point….actually putting humpty dumpty back together again. If anything was going to make my cry and go running to my gun smith, it would be this step.

The first obstacle was putting the trigger group back in. This requires you to affix a spring to the hold open lever and is incredibly challenging. In Greg’s video tutorials, he magically is able to connect this spring to the hold open level, hold the spring in position, and push the trigger pin through the spring loop and hole in the receiver on the opposite side. After about an hour of wrestling with the spring it became clear my connection to the Force was not as strong as Greg’s, and and I was not going to be able to perform this impressive maneuver as he demonstrates in the video. After another email to Greg, I determined that some people run the trigger pin through the spring loop and receiver hole, THEN bend the spring end up and around the little lip on the hold open lever where it’s intended to rest. The process still wasn’t easy, but it turned an impossible job which required three hands to one which was within the realm of possibility with two. After about 20 minutes, much to my surprise, I got the spring properly attached to the hold open lever. The clouds parted, the sun shone down, and the angels sang. I jumped on top of my work bench, spread my arms and leaned out yelling “I’m king of the world!!!” Well, Ok…maybe I didn’t actually jump on top of my work bench (though I have perhaps seen the movie Titanic one too many times…). But this was a huge turning point in the project, I had rather assumed that this would be the most difficult part of the project, and that it was all downhill from here. I put the hammer back in, and replaced the safety….I was on a roll! Here’s a photo of the receiver showing the installed trigger and hammer:

The it came time to replace the axis pin retaining spring…It turned out to be a significant challenge too….much like threading a needle. I was already pretty tired and frustrated at this point, and for once in my life, I listened to my wife, and I went to bed. After a good night’s sleep, and about 20 minutes of fiddling, I got the axis pin retaining spring installed and properly seated:

Much to my surprise and amazement, function testing the hammer and trigger confirmed that everything was working properly. Now I really was pretty satisfied that the toughest steps of the conversion were behind me. All that was left at this point was to attach the Tromix trigger guard, and my Hogue pistol grip:

It took me about 4 nights working about an hour or so a night to get to this point. As of this writing, I’m still waiting on my quad rail, and recoil reducing Mako stock parts to come in, which should be in about 2 more days. They’ll be super easy to install, and then I put the bolt carrier group back in, the cover back on, and my Saiga 12 will be fully converted and modified!

Since I’m at a stopping point in the project, I decided to total up my costs so far:

Here’s a list of all the parts I purchased for this project and the approximate price paid.

Hogue rubber pistol grip – $25.
Competition break Jt Engineering – $100
Tromix Saiga fire control group – $45
Tromix trigger guard DIY – $45
Trigger group hole plugs – $1
Bolt hold open kit – $15
CSS brand Saiga 12 quad rail – $158.00
CSS iron sights – $75.95
V-Plug – $25.00
Mako Recoil Reducing Stock – $100.00
Mako Recoil Reducing Tube – $80.00

TOTAL: $670.00

Add that to the $729 I paid for my Saiga 12, plus a few tools I had to pick up, I figure the project cost me right at ~$1500.00. But considering that my alternative to the Saiga 12 was to buy a Benelli M4 (~$1600.00), I still saved a few bucks and got a more capable weapon in many respects that will be perfectly suitable for 3 gun competition if I so choose. And I’m sure I saved…tens of dollars…doing all that work on my Saiga 12 myself. Saving money really wasn’t the issue though…it was proving to myself that I could.

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