I am a new member to this forum. I decided to do a comparison of a couple of 22LR uppers and wrote a review of them. Because I am new, I am limited to 2000 characters per post so I will try and break my review up into small enough posts to stay within the rules.

Due to the recent availability of cheap Bushmaster lowers I decided to build a couple of dedicated 22LR AR-15 rifles. My seventeen year old son was on board with the idea since he would end up with one of the finished products. I bought a DPMS dedicated 22 LR upper with a 16" bull barrel as well as an economically priced Chiappa dedicated 22 LR upper. The two of us built the lowers together and he learned quickly how to correctly assemble an AR-15 to his own personal tastes.

The DPMS upper was left unaltered as it did not require any attention in order to get it to shoot well. The Chiappa would not shoot that well out of the box so it was disassembled and a loose barrel nut was found to be the culprit. The nut was not even hand tight so the barrel was free to move quite a bit. The barrel nut was tightened very carefully to avoid damage to the synthetic upper receiver and the Chiappa began to shoot pretty well.  While putting the Chiappa back together an inexpensive Target Sports quad rail was added for a vertical laser grip that my son wanted to mount.

The finished product with the Chiappa upper is a respectable shooter. Here is a picture of it configured to my son's liking.

I decided to do a comparison of the two upper receivers with an eye on accuracy, function, and reliability. To keep an even playing field I decided to use a Colt Match Target lower receiver as the test bed for the comparison. The Colt lower had been fitted with a Timney trigger and performs extremely well with the centerfire upper that came on it. Both 22 LR uppers were fitted using an Accuwedge to remove any play between the upper and lower receivers. The DPMS upper fits much better than the Chiappa when mating them to the lower receiver. I believe that the aluminum versus the synthetic upper receiver material is responsible for the difference. The hole for the rear pin on the Chiappa is not exactly aligned with the holes in the lower receiver, but because the upper is plastic it can be flexed to get the pin in place.

The price points of the two upper receivers are quite different, so I went into this test with a bias against the Chiappa. I didn't think that an upper purchased for $199.99 would be able to compete with the DPMS which cost $337.50. The component quality is visibly worse on the Chiappa, from the synthetic receiver to the thin plating on the bolt components that begins to wear off almost immediately. The DPMS has a solid, quality feel to it from the moment it is unboxed. The Chiappa lacks this solid feel, but this less than inspiring feel was proven to be deceptive in the final results of the range tests conducted.

To evaluate the two uppers, approximately 500 rounds of ammunition from various manufacturers were fired through each of the upper assemblies and accuracy was documented for each of the different loads tested. A total of four groups, each consisting of five shots, were fired with each different load. All shooting was done from a bench at 50 yards. The barrels were cleaned in between each change of ammunition and five fouling shots were fired before shooting groups for the record. I have found that the first few shots after switching ammunition can be influenced by the previous load's fouling in the barrel. This is why the cleaning regimen was strictly adhered to during the testing. Telescopic sights were mounted on each upper receiver for the test and both were set at 9X.

Here are pictures of each of the upper receivers as tested:

DPMS:


Chiappa:

The results of the bench rest testing are in the tables below:




A final test was conducted with each upper firing 50 rounds as fast as possible while cradling the rifle in my hands and resting my hands on the bags. This test required two reloads. The actual firing of the 50 rounds was done in under a minute, but the change of magazines took some additional time. Ammunition was picked for each rifle that had performed well in the bench rest test. No failures to feed, fire, or eject were experienced during this part of the test. The targets for these 50 round tests are pictured below:

The summary table for all accuracy tests conducted is shown below:



It should be noted that out of all the ammunition tested, the CCI Stinger had by far the worst accuracy. It shot over six inch groups in both uppers. I tested the lot of Stinger ammo that I had on hand in a bolt gun that I knew shot them well and they grouped under 0.5 inches. Since there was nothing suspect about the ammo, I can only guess at what might cause the poor performance in these two uppers. Since the Stinger data was so different, I removed the Stinger results from these tables so that they would not skew the other data taken. If these two uppers are any indication, you should avoid using Stinger ammunition in these rifles.

Cleaning both upper receivers was pretty straight forward. The bolt assembly is removed and can be cleaned easily. They do foul quite a bit; there was a visible pile of fouling left on the bench after shooting each rifle. The bolt of the Chiappa is plated, and this plating began wearing off with the first round fired. Frequent cleaning has removed even more of the plating. This appears to be an esthetic issue only and does not seem to hinder function. After 500 rounds were fired, pictures were taken of the internals and both upper assemblies were thoroughly cleaned. Other than the worn plating on the Chiappa there were no visible signs of any problems. The Chiappa functioned well when dirty and was not finicky about what ammunition was used. The DPMS functions well as long as you use ammo that it likes. It does seem more sensitive as it gets dirty. The Chiappa is much more suited to a day of hassle free shooting when you leave the cleaning kit at home.

DPMS Bolt:


Chiappa Bolt:


After testing both uppers I was surprised by the reliability and accuracy of the Chiappa. With minimal effort it has proven to shoot quite well. I expected the DPMS to outperform the Chiappa and was not disappointed. However the margin of the victory was less than I expected. With the right loads the DPMS is more accurate than the Chiappa, but on average it is just marginally better. The DPMS has a much tighter chamber tolerance and it would not feed some ammunition at all, while the Chiappa's larger chamber allowed it to feed and function without giving up that much in the accuracy department. If the Chiappa had a floated hand guard like the DPMS I am unsure which upper would have won this comparison. Like all things, you get what you pay for. The fit and finish of the DPMS is what you are paying for when you order one, and they deliver a quality product. If you don't have enough funds to swing the more expensive upper then you might not be as disappointed as you think with the Chiappa.

This was by no means a long term reliability test. To date we have put about 1500 rounds through each of the rifles. The Chiappa has seen rougher service in the hands of a teenager and is still performing well. It is hard to say how long it will keep it up, but so far it has done everything asked of it. I hope this review can be of help to some of you.

Nice write up and review.
I wrote a review on the DPMS when it came out.
I was impressed with the accuracy and reliability. I don't recall any malfunctions and accuracy was about what you were getting--.5 @ 50 yards.

Never tried the Chiappa. Friend had one and the bolt came apart on it in a short time.
Good friend of mine who has designed many weapons you are familiar with said the Chiappa is a good design that uses bad parts.

Dave N

Thanks, I like both of them so far. The ammo that the DPMS did not like seemed to shave the bullet when it was being chambered. Here is a picture of the Remington Goldem ammo that was tried and failed to chamber. I tried several different magazines of different manufacture with the same results.
Dave

I did a test on an ati/ chiappa m4-22 upper myself.  I found that the upper was unreliable with remington gold, and, like you, found the barrel nut less than hand tight.  Tightening it alleviated the problem...temporarily.  After 2k rounds I experienced the bolt face and breech being out of square, and soon after that...self destruction of the bolt.  Depending what generation bolt you get, you are more likely to experience catastrophic failure in the m4-22.  This barrel also accumulates leading VERY quickly and attributes to a decline in accuracy.

After i decided to ditch the poly upper, i found that the barrel indexing pin was slightly too large for the forged upper!!  I squeezed it in, and all my reliability problems have disappeared.

As far as i understand, the dpms 22 upper is not supported for replacement parts.  With the lack of support for dpms and the chiappa being crap, my vote goes to building with quality parts, plain and simple.

Nice post man !

Greetings,

This is the major fail with the DPMS upper; no parts support. Also, and it may or may not matter to anyone specifically; the bolt/firing pin design to hammer interface precludes the use of the Gieslee SSA SSA/E FCGs.  Otherwise (and perhaps requiring a bit more constant cleaning), my DPMS upper now has well over 10K rounds through it. Accuracy has been consistently good with ammo it likes and failures of any type are relatively rare. It's a shame they won't support a decent product.


PS.........OP, thanks for a great write up!

Regards, Jim

The DPMS certainly looks like they bought the Nordic pattern. Not sure if Nordic is making them for them but I suspect so. I would try for replacement parts from Nordic.

Nordic supplied DPMS the uppers.
And as I suspected when I initially did a review of it, the parts and follow up disappeared.
Too bad because it was a very good design.

Dave N

The Chiappa is a good design done poorly. It is a cheap imitation of the Tactical Solutions .22 AR which was a fine piece except for the glued together barrels. As noted the DPMS was farmed out from Nordic. It shot well with the right ammo. If I recall (and I could be mistaken) the design was done by Tim Uhl when  he was at Nordic. The bolt was kind of copied from the timeless Ruger 10/22 design.

After a lot of competition in the .22 AR game the folks over at CMMG sort of won the game. They did the big time mass market thing and pumped out .22 AR's by the thousands. Parts are available from both them and the aftermarket. Personally I stick with their products (or at least that design).  The Chiappas are hit and miss due to quality variations in them. You can buy them cheap but you know the old saying.....