Dbuffington
Member
Hi Folks!
This post is intended as a range report of sorts to answer the many questions I had about actually using an ERMA K98k .22 LR Conversion Kit.
All additions, suggestions and criticisms are welcome.
Thanks!
Dave
====
Q&A: ERMA K98k .22 LR Conversion Kit
So, you got yourself a K98k. Now, what are you going to do with it?
Your wallet will take a hefty hit – 75 cents to a dollar – every time you pull the trigger on an store-bought 8 mm round, and your shoulder will take another blow – with recoil energy more than triple that of a 5.56/.223 round.
The solution is a conversion kit that will let you enjoy your K98k with (relatively) inexpensive and (definitely) softer shooting .22 Long Rifle ammo. These kits were reportedly made by a variety of German manufacturers, dating back to the 1930s.
However, in my experience, the most common of these kits were made by ERMA – the Erfurter Maschinenfabrik – and known as the “EL24” kit. Here’s one I was fortunate to pick up from Kinsey’s Outdoors in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania:
What’s in the box?
- An insert. That’s the very long piece at the bottom of the box. It’s comprised of a 22 bolt and receiver sleeve which is attached to the barrel sleeve.
- A five-round magazine (upper left). Two mags were typically included. Alas, only one came with my kit.
- A floor-plate insert (upper right)
- A steel pin to rotate the locking collar. The pin was missing from my kit, but any short piece of steel rod or a drill bit will suffice.
It was all packaged in a very cool hardwood, plywood box which was routed to fit the various parts of the kit. To a collector, the box is a very valuable component, and fakes reportedly exist.
Before we proceed, a word of warning … ERMA made kits to fit a variety of German rifles, not just the K98k. In my case, I had to go out and buy a K98k to confirm that I had the kit to fit a K98k, which admittedly was putting the cart way before the horse.
How do you install it? Even with a genuine Mauser-made K98k in hand, the installation was a bit of a puzzle. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
- Remove the original bolt.
- Remove the original floor plate. This can be a bit of a challenge. Mine was very tightly fit and glued in place by years of gunk. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCG3GwDDnrE for instructions.
- Clean and lightly lube the bore. Lightly lube the barrel sleeve while you’re at it.
- Remove the .22 bolt from the from the insert. There no release button or lever. Just maneuver the bolt handle through the little raceway than runs out the back of the insert.
- BEFORE YOU PUT THE INSERT IN THE K98, rotate the locking collar counterclockwise. The locking collar? It’s the piece with the pinholes, just ahead of the proof marks here:
- Look for the locking lugs on the insert. Rotate the lugs until the larger lug is on the right side, and the smaller lug is on the left. The insert will not go the whole way into the gun if the lugs are reversed.
- Insert the insert into the breech of the barrel. Go slowly. There will be friction, but if you wiggle it a bit, it will go in. (Insert inappropriate joke here.) On my example it required a bit of force, but not much. A light tap with a block of wood drove it in the last quarter inch or so. When you’re done, the ERMA logo should be on top, and the thick part of the receiver insert should be just forward of the rear edge of the original receiver ring.
- Using the pin mentioned earlier to rotate the locking collar clockwise. Just a snug fit is needed to keep it place.
- Install the .22 floor plate. Again, mine was very tightly fit and required a bit of gentle tapping to secure. Install the .22 magazine in the floor plate.
- Install the bolt, maneuvering it back through the raceway.
One special note … the .22 conversion cocks on closing. That is, the effort required to cock the firing pin spring comes from closing the bolt, and you’ll find that out right away. I’d guesstimate it takes about 10 pounds of force to close the bolt.
But wait, there’s more … the conversion bolt has does not have a latching mechanism to keep the bolt cocked if you open the bolt without having pulled the trigger first. So, if you close the bolt and then open it without firing the gun, the bolt will spring back with the same energy you put into closing it. The bolt isn’t going anywhere, but it can be a bit of a surprise.
Now, for the big question: Does it work?
Flawlessly.
The conversion feeds, fires, extracts and ejects without no issues at all. The trigger has a long first stage pull with a heavy, but crisp break. That’s just as it was before the conversion was installed. The magazine release works with a sliding, not pushing, motion which takes a try or two to learn, but it works perfectly.
What about recoil? The gun weighs 9 pounds, 5 ounces with the conversion kit installed. Firing a 40 grain bullet at maybe 1,200 feet per second generates a felt recoil of, well, nada.
How does it look? Like some sort of Rube Goldberg rig? Judge for yourself …
The obvious tells are the straight bolt handle and the magazine sticking out the bottom of the stock …
But I bet it would take more than a minute or two for anyone at the range to notice.
All of which brings us to the final question: Does it shoot? That is, what level of consistency/accuracy does it deliver?
I don’t know. Why? Because of the godawful sights. The rear is a shallow V. The front is a short inverted V. It’s almost impossible to get a consistent sight picture with the pair, especially in the vertical axis, especially with 64-year-old eyes. The irony is that this has nothing to do with the ERMA conversion. The sights are Mauser parts, and to make it all the more frustrating, Mauser sporting rifles of the era have wonderful, easy-to-align, post-and-notch sights.
Now, having vented, I can tell you this … I was routinely hitting a 4-inch-diameter steel plate at 100 yards with those sights.
Which ain’t bad.
And in the end, the level of accuracy is more than adequate for the purpose of the kit: to let you enjoy your K98k with very little physical or fiscal pain.
Well, that’s not quite true.
The kit isn’t cheap. I paid $795 for mine earlier this year (2020), and if you don’t already have the K98k, you can figure on another thousand or two or three. World War II era arms and accessories were already accelerating in price before the presidential election, and I expect they’re only going to climb faster. Proceed as your budget sees fit.
Enjoy!
Dave
P.S. Before I go, I want to thank “kaynine” and all the folks at rimfirecentral.com for all their help in this project. If you love rimfires of any kind, you need to stop in there.
This post is intended as a range report of sorts to answer the many questions I had about actually using an ERMA K98k .22 LR Conversion Kit.
All additions, suggestions and criticisms are welcome.
Thanks!
Dave
====
Q&A: ERMA K98k .22 LR Conversion Kit
So, you got yourself a K98k. Now, what are you going to do with it?
Your wallet will take a hefty hit – 75 cents to a dollar – every time you pull the trigger on an store-bought 8 mm round, and your shoulder will take another blow – with recoil energy more than triple that of a 5.56/.223 round.
The solution is a conversion kit that will let you enjoy your K98k with (relatively) inexpensive and (definitely) softer shooting .22 Long Rifle ammo. These kits were reportedly made by a variety of German manufacturers, dating back to the 1930s.
However, in my experience, the most common of these kits were made by ERMA – the Erfurter Maschinenfabrik – and known as the “EL24” kit. Here’s one I was fortunate to pick up from Kinsey’s Outdoors in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania:
What’s in the box?
- An insert. That’s the very long piece at the bottom of the box. It’s comprised of a 22 bolt and receiver sleeve which is attached to the barrel sleeve.
- A five-round magazine (upper left). Two mags were typically included. Alas, only one came with my kit.
- A floor-plate insert (upper right)
- A steel pin to rotate the locking collar. The pin was missing from my kit, but any short piece of steel rod or a drill bit will suffice.
It was all packaged in a very cool hardwood, plywood box which was routed to fit the various parts of the kit. To a collector, the box is a very valuable component, and fakes reportedly exist.
Before we proceed, a word of warning … ERMA made kits to fit a variety of German rifles, not just the K98k. In my case, I had to go out and buy a K98k to confirm that I had the kit to fit a K98k, which admittedly was putting the cart way before the horse.
How do you install it? Even with a genuine Mauser-made K98k in hand, the installation was a bit of a puzzle. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
- Remove the original bolt.
- Remove the original floor plate. This can be a bit of a challenge. Mine was very tightly fit and glued in place by years of gunk. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCG3GwDDnrE for instructions.
- Clean and lightly lube the bore. Lightly lube the barrel sleeve while you’re at it.
- Remove the .22 bolt from the from the insert. There no release button or lever. Just maneuver the bolt handle through the little raceway than runs out the back of the insert.
- BEFORE YOU PUT THE INSERT IN THE K98, rotate the locking collar counterclockwise. The locking collar? It’s the piece with the pinholes, just ahead of the proof marks here:
- Look for the locking lugs on the insert. Rotate the lugs until the larger lug is on the right side, and the smaller lug is on the left. The insert will not go the whole way into the gun if the lugs are reversed.
- Insert the insert into the breech of the barrel. Go slowly. There will be friction, but if you wiggle it a bit, it will go in. (Insert inappropriate joke here.) On my example it required a bit of force, but not much. A light tap with a block of wood drove it in the last quarter inch or so. When you’re done, the ERMA logo should be on top, and the thick part of the receiver insert should be just forward of the rear edge of the original receiver ring.
- Using the pin mentioned earlier to rotate the locking collar clockwise. Just a snug fit is needed to keep it place.
- Install the .22 floor plate. Again, mine was very tightly fit and required a bit of gentle tapping to secure. Install the .22 magazine in the floor plate.
- Install the bolt, maneuvering it back through the raceway.
One special note … the .22 conversion cocks on closing. That is, the effort required to cock the firing pin spring comes from closing the bolt, and you’ll find that out right away. I’d guesstimate it takes about 10 pounds of force to close the bolt.
But wait, there’s more … the conversion bolt has does not have a latching mechanism to keep the bolt cocked if you open the bolt without having pulled the trigger first. So, if you close the bolt and then open it without firing the gun, the bolt will spring back with the same energy you put into closing it. The bolt isn’t going anywhere, but it can be a bit of a surprise.
Now, for the big question: Does it work?
Flawlessly.
The conversion feeds, fires, extracts and ejects without no issues at all. The trigger has a long first stage pull with a heavy, but crisp break. That’s just as it was before the conversion was installed. The magazine release works with a sliding, not pushing, motion which takes a try or two to learn, but it works perfectly.
What about recoil? The gun weighs 9 pounds, 5 ounces with the conversion kit installed. Firing a 40 grain bullet at maybe 1,200 feet per second generates a felt recoil of, well, nada.
How does it look? Like some sort of Rube Goldberg rig? Judge for yourself …
The obvious tells are the straight bolt handle and the magazine sticking out the bottom of the stock …
But I bet it would take more than a minute or two for anyone at the range to notice.
All of which brings us to the final question: Does it shoot? That is, what level of consistency/accuracy does it deliver?
I don’t know. Why? Because of the godawful sights. The rear is a shallow V. The front is a short inverted V. It’s almost impossible to get a consistent sight picture with the pair, especially in the vertical axis, especially with 64-year-old eyes. The irony is that this has nothing to do with the ERMA conversion. The sights are Mauser parts, and to make it all the more frustrating, Mauser sporting rifles of the era have wonderful, easy-to-align, post-and-notch sights.
Now, having vented, I can tell you this … I was routinely hitting a 4-inch-diameter steel plate at 100 yards with those sights.
Which ain’t bad.
And in the end, the level of accuracy is more than adequate for the purpose of the kit: to let you enjoy your K98k with very little physical or fiscal pain.
Well, that’s not quite true.
The kit isn’t cheap. I paid $795 for mine earlier this year (2020), and if you don’t already have the K98k, you can figure on another thousand or two or three. World War II era arms and accessories were already accelerating in price before the presidential election, and I expect they’re only going to climb faster. Proceed as your budget sees fit.
Enjoy!
Dave
P.S. Before I go, I want to thank “kaynine” and all the folks at rimfirecentral.com for all their help in this project. If you love rimfires of any kind, you need to stop in there.
