I've had an itch for an Arisaka for a while and looked at one in a local shop today that looked complete and original and in good shape, intact Mum even.
The guy said it had been "rechambered" to 7.62x39. I looked and it did have a plastic spacer in the magazine for shooting a shorter cartridge, but the barrel sure looked like the original barrel. Knowing you can't rechamber a longer cartridge to a shorter one, I have to assume some kind of spacer was inserted into the chamber kind of like I've heard of for making a .30-06 shoot .308 ammo.
Anybody heard of this kind of conversion and can it be reversed? It would still be a neat shooter, but I already have a bolt action 7.62x39.