I noticed recently the safety on my rifle seemed very easy to rotate...way too easy. I took off the grip and checked out the detent and spring. The detent looks misshapen to me. Instead of a round point, it has sort of a "V" on top where it looks like it was worn on both sides of the point. Compared to a detent out of a LPK I had the difference is obvious. I checked out my other BAD ASS kit and the detent is worm similarly as well but not quite as bad.

Is it normal for detents to wear like this or are the Battle Arms detents bad? They don't seem to be near as hardened as they should be. I replaced them both with LPK detents and the safeties feel great. I guess I had slowly gotten used to the safeties not clicking up and down as crisply as they should and it wasn't until they got really bad did I notice.

BAD ASS on left, LPK detent on right---->

I thought the BAD ASS detents are stainless. I never looked at mine after putting them in. I do have one that is pretty easy to flip without a distinct click, but I prefer it that way.

I had a thread recently and even in the past with this issue.

The spring coil needs to be clipped. Not all of the holes in the grips are perfect and if one is slightly shallow, the extra spring tension will prematurely wear the detents.

I have the exact same problem with my BAD-CASS kit's detent aswell! I too switched to a LPK detent and it works fine but doesn't feel near as smooth to me.

I assume their detents are to soft because I've never had a LPK detent wear on me so much so fast.

Hmmm I'll need to try that because I definitely prefer the feel of their detents when new and well... not ground down to a tiny nub.

I wonder if specific grips are causing more problems than others?

They provide a superior quality detent, I'd contact them and see what they say.  It sounds like they may have gotten a few bad ones.

Each and every grip is slightly unique so you may find trends but pinpointing a specific grip as a problem would seem less likely. They provide two springs in their packaging for this exact reason. Clip one coil, if it is still tough or you feel the action is being fought a little with flick (or not easily going from safe to fire, getting stuck right beforehand) clip another coil.

You can also thread in a tiny set screw in to the hole of the grip. It will put more spring pressure on the safety detent.

Is this mentioned in the instructions? I don't remember reading anything about this...it makes sense I guess.

I still think the detents are bad however. The one in the picture in particular is very new, less than 2 months old, and other than flipping it maybe about 50 times, it's barely been used. The selector didn't feel overly tight when it was first installed. I'll see how well the LPK detent holds up. If after a couple months it doesn't show any signs of wear I'll know the BAD detents are too soft.

Could try the nickel Teflon coated detents from damage industries, that stuff is supposed to pretty darn hard and I can testify that it's slippery and self lubricating.

Been using all their coated detents and springs in my builds for quite awhile now, they also make take down and pivot pins easier to operate and the things will never rust. I originally tried them just because I got tired of buying lpks and not using half of it and damage has all the parts I normally need individually after I get all the other parts I like to use (g-triggers, bad or v7 safeties, v7 mag catches, seekins mag catch buttons and bolt catches, various trigger guards, various grips, etc). All I end up needing is takedown/pivot pins, a few detents and a couple roll pins.

I've been extremely pleased with the detents and springs, especially for the price and I'm sure you could find some other stuff over there to ease shipping though I think it's set at $5 anyways, that may have changed though it's been a little bit since I've ordered anything from them.

Just a thought, do with it what you will.

I actually ordered 4 detents and a couple of other small parts from Damage Industries shortly after posting just above you. I just ordered the $1 a pop detents...are these the ones you are referring to?

http://damageindustriesllc.com/product/detent-selector-ar15m16

Someone else posted something similar recently.   Exact same grooving going on.

Whats even more interesting is on the Battle Arms Development web site, they list a heat treated stainless steel safety selector! Am I to ass u me these are not used in their safety selector kits?

You dont suppose the worn detent in the op's post is the heat treated stainless steel detent on BAD web site? As I look at it, it's hard to tell if it is. I'm no metallurgist, but could ss wear like this?

Me.


And OP, nothing in the packaging that indicated it. I learned it from my thread.

That sure as hell looks like them. You'll be able to tell as soon as you feel it, it's got a feel of its own. I just get the sets that include all detents and springs, never ordered those parts separate so I can't be positive as it's not in the description.

After reading this thread, I checked the detents on 3 of my rifles that have BAD selectors.   They are all worn like the one in the op.  I clipped a coil from the spring and added RRA detents to each of them.  Only time will tell, but they all feel great.  Until now, I have never been overly impressed with the feel of these selectors.

I also believe (gut feeling) that the detents are bad.  If the springs being too long is the issue, I would have the same detent wear with my other rifles with standard selectors.

Each set up is unique and has different tolerances. The receivers themselves have a small chance of being out of spec but the most common issue is with the grips (many manufacturers, many levels of acceptable tolerances, etc.).

Time will tell but I'd bet clipping the spring helps. Battlearms was quick to mention that these detents ARE wear items but the wear can be accelerated due to certain tolerances in conjunction with too much spring tension.

Gents, this is almost always a matter of excessive spring pressure.  There isn't much wrong with springs, but the spring hole of the pistol grip can vary, thus exerting different amount of pressure on the detent.  

Head over to BAD's industry forum and you'll find many FAQ articles I wrote during my time at Battle Arms (as you can probably divine, I am no longer there  I have left to start another company, soon to be active here again as a manufacturer)

The same thing can happen with any selector, not any particular brand.  We spent a great deal of time perfecting the geometry of the detent groove, depth, shoulder height, detent hole depth and its "ramp" up to the groove, I also spent a lot of time dealing with customers that had this symptom.

Now and then there were out of spec centers that would cause premature wear, but these are rather rare.  What a selector manufacturer can't control is the grip and receiver you have, both can be the source of tolerance stacking.

I sent detents that had similar wear (got them from a customer) to KNS, which proceeded to test the hardness of the detents.  Their hardness was up to spec, KNS suggested it may be excessive spring tension (which I already suspected to be the case but did not tell KNS), after a replacement center and detents failed to solve the problem.

Clip off a coil of spring at a time and give that a try over the next few dozen rotations. An extra spring is provided in the retail kit so you'll always have an intact spring, that was one of the reasons we decided to include the spring when nobody else did