I bought one about ywo months ago. My dealer who is a class III dealer and owns, and has shot/sold, lot's of FA 1919s was amazed at the fit and finish of mine. He said it was the nicest one he'd ever seen. I was impressed with the smoothness of the action. I read, and recommend you do likewise, all the information on this site, regarding, disaassembly/reassembly, and most importantly, HEADSPACE!! Once you understand that you're good to go.
All the threads I read on this board recommended using synthetic motor oil as the lube, I would have thought it would have been grease on something this big. AA had test fired the gun, but had not cleaned it. I cleaned the barrel only, not the internals, I did however study where the wear marks were, lubed those areas with 30 wt synthetic, motor oil, and reassembled her. As a side note, I use 30 wt syn oil on all my pistols (1911s and p-22) also on my 22's (10/22, ar15, m96 Recon), on my battle rifles I use Synthetic wheel bearing grease (M1 Garands, M1As, FALs)
I've been using both synthetics for almost 10 years now with very good results. Why pay out the butt for a little tube of lube at the gun store, when you can get a whole tub of grease, or quart of oil, for about the same price, and if stored properly will last you for years?
I took the AA 1919 out last week for it's first firing, we loaded our belts in 100rd sections. We fired about 150 semi-auto, then we installed the Emory Crankfire (I highly recommend one of these),= and cranked the other 550 rds that we shot........WHAT A BLAST!! My shooting partner, Marc, and I dumped 700rds without one jam, or malfunction. I was very impressed! I can now highly recommend Allied Armament, they make a good product. We let the gun cool 15-30 minutes between each belt. Two of the belts we ran through (with a cooling period between each) with the crankfire as fast as she'd go, she was smoking, and hot, but worked 100%.
I finally cleaned the 1919 earlier this week. I saw where the barrel had wear marks up by the booster, and had oiled it there around the muzzle, before I fired her, this may have been a mistake, as there was quite a lot of powder residue "impregnated" onto the front of the barrel, a cleaning brush and Sweets 7.62 cleaner didn't faze it, I had to scrape it off with a razor blade. The chrome lined Israeli barrel was filthy, but easy to clean. By the way we were shooting South African 308.
The internals were filthy with carbon and brass residule, but cleaned up easy with Hoppes #9 and a toothbrush. Some of the oil I had applied was gone, maybe from shooting, but most likely the fresh parkerization sucked it up like a sponge, however, all the metal to metal moving pieces were still WELL lubricated. I may try synthetic wheel bearing grease on her in the future, but for right now she runs fine on the syn oil, so that's what I reassembed her with once I got her all cleaned up.
Anyway I rambled enough, bottom line, I highly recommend AA!!
Hope this helps
Tom Kelly
Buckeye, AZ