Ok, I finally got around to putting a rail on my AK and am sorely disappointed. Needless to say I should have listened to good advice given above but no, I had to go and get a B-square. It got good reviews and the pictures looked ok so I told Young I wanted one for Christmas.
I thought from looking at the mount and laying it in place over the receiver that the cover would never come off after mounting. No, I told myself. No one would make a mount that had to be removed to field strip a weapon. Wrong. Anyway, I digress.
The B-square came without any instructions and apparently all the hardware. I scoured the web for instructions and there were none to be had. I finally determined how to mount the blasted thing. By the way, here's the pic on a web site...
If you are familiar with AKs then you can see the mount sits right over the receiver cover which has to be removed to strip the rifle.
So, I took my AK apart and replaced the hammer and trigger pins with the mounting screws that came with the mount. I put everything back together only to find that the gun would not fire - release the hammer - after reassembly. I noticed the hammer was caught on the trigger. After screwing around for about 45 minutes and searching different AK sites I noticed that the trigger was loose on the mount. I finally found that the original pin had a sleeve on it. So, I took everything apart again and put the sleeve from the original pin on the pin supplied with the B-square mount. Put everything back together again and it worked fine.
Now, I tightened the mounting pins using the knurled knobs provide by B-square with the mount. Silly me, I should have left them loose. Once everything was tightened down I tried to charge the gun but the bolt would only come back about an inch. Frustrated I finally decide the knurled knobs on the mounting pins were too tight. I removed the mount, loosened the knobs and the bolt worked fine. I used a little trial and error to get them tight but still allowing the bolt to travel freely.
So no with everything back together and tightened I decided to see if the receiver cover could be removed. Not.
If my red dot scope will retain zero after removing the mount to field strip the rifle and the knurled knobs dont fall off during use I might keep everything as is. My guess is it might to a degree but not with any measure of precision and the knobs will one day loosen. So my frustration will no doubt mount -- BUT -- arent I glad I left that little red bottle of LocTite closed on the table and decided not to use any.
That decision will no doubt save even more frustration...