Went in my local shop today and they had a used 14” pistol, with a folding brace. It looked good, and for whatever reason I NEVER see used ones in my area, so I took a chance and put it on layaway. After I got home I started looking g at braces, and it has a F5 MFG modular brace system with mod 1 Tailhook, and lower adapter. It seeed really solid, and looked great to me. The website says sold out, and priced at $399.00
Does anyone have experience or thoughts on that brace in particular? Anything I need to know ow about the Bren 2 in general?
Thanks!

Welcome to the club! A few pages of discussion here. Timely thread for me. Yesterday, I went over to HBI and picked up their optimized gas plug and assembly, detail stripped my Bren, ran it through the ultrasonic, then lubed and reassembled the whole thing. Taking it out to an NV shoot this coming Saturday night and looking forward to seeing how smoothly it cycles suppressed with the new gas plug.



Honestly, with the 14" since you're looking at braces and all that anyway, I would just do a pin and weld with a Plan B compatible muzzle device and rock out with the OEM "BR" stock. That way you're into the current hot stuff suppressor mounting pattern. HBI for a longer handguard (they're the OEM CZ went with for the handguard on the 16" version anyway). HBI trigger puts it easily into Geissele turf in my opinion, and for peanuts, comparatively speaking. Neoteric Designs makes some neat stuff. Haga makes stuff also, but don't get suckered into the idea that you "need" the aluminum AR lower for $400whatever, the OEM lower is damned good. Lingle makes a really good bolt catch/release, just takes a bit of work with a sanding block and some dry film lube to get it perfect. That's all it takes to really perfect the platform in my opinion. HBI makes a gas piston replacement for the suppressed setting the 8", 11", and 14" rifles don't come with from the factory. For $50 more, KNS makes the Czech Valve with way too many settings so you can fine tune your rifle if you're super anal about that stuff.

You picked up arguably the perfect barrel length, honestly. If you wanted to pin and weld and put a waffle stock on it, you could also throw a set of Preston rails on it and build up a Czech mil issue clone if you were of a mind to. There's a ton of those being fielded in Ukraine. Just know that the waffle stock's adjustments have wobble and slop in them that the BR stock (what you see on mine) don't have.

Neat rifles, very capable, and a fairly broad and dedicated aftermarket that picked up the ball that CZ massively dropped. Canada's shit AR ban somehow totally overlooked the Bren, so there's a very dedicated following for the rifle up North, and they're driving a new resurgence on parts availability, there's just some legal hoop-jumping that needs to get figured out on getting stuff shipped to the US. Barrels were unobtanium, but there's some smaller companies that are taking that baton and running with it. CZ announced the Bren 3 a few months back, but with Ukraine and CZ's shipping schedule overall, it'll be probably two years before they hit the market here, so don't feel like you just bought into a dying platform. There's going to be a loyal aftermarket for a while. I was on the fence about reverting mine back to OEM and just yesterday settled on "fuck it" and put it all back together if that tells you were I came down on the topic after lots of looking into it and being involved in the community.

P220Smudge has most of it. But to second what he said the big advise on a 14" just do the pin and weld and be done with the brace. I don't know anything about that particular brace so no hope there. When I ran a brace I used the 1913 adapter and so had a lot of choices that all seemed fine. Have since pinned and welded on the 14" one and SBR'd the shorter ones so don't do that anymore. You didn't say what caliber? I might have a bit of extra commentary when you say that as the 7.62 is different. But if you are running suppressed you will likely need to do something about the gas situation as is noted above. I really like the Bren's.

Thanks for the quick response! I’m already doing the plan b mounts, so that might be a good idea. Pin and weld, sell the brace setup to offset the cost of a stock! I’ll read the thread you posted and check out the mfg’s you listed! Thanks!!

Happy to help! I hope you like it. Be sure and let us know what you think when you pick it up and get it to the range.

In 5,56 caliber it uses standard AR (NATO) mags.
In 7,62 , it uses CZ proprietary mags , not AK mags.

Yup, but you can get to AK mags for the 7.62 by using the lingle lower. very neat. solves the trigger issues at the same time. suppressed you still need to solve the gas plug.

Just adding that it is 5.56