I came across the the Chiappa Firearms website and see they sell M4 Style 22LR upper:

M4-22 LR Upper

Has anybody had experience with thier uppers/components?  Do you folks know if Blackdog 22LR Standard Capacity magazines work with these uppers?

I have two of their older style M4-22 uppers.  Built standard lowers for them, one is a PSA for my wife, the other I used one of those ATI hybrid lowers (metal/plastic).

Yes, BDM mags work fine in them.

And the "10 round" long mags they ship have these little pins that prevent the follower from allowing more than 10, 15, 20 rounds from being loaded.  Be careful with them, they might fall out.  

I've had pretty good luck with accuracy and function with mine.  I use whatever cheap bulk ammo I have laying around, some of it is 15+ years old.  They use plastic upper receivers, but I'm not planning on throwing it down the driveway or anything.

Just looked at the price... hot damn.  Last one I bought was $140 new.  Previous one was during the other panic, it was, uh... under $300, iirc.  

I have one that's a few years old and it's been great. I did change the plastic receiver out with a standard one I had laying around. Used several different lowers and all work fine. All my BDM mags work just fine.

It's a slightly different configuration than the CMMG, so things like Bore Buddy upgrades won't work with it.

I have 2, both have been dead nuts reliable with BDM magazines, but neither would empty the chiappa magazines that came with them.  Every two or three rounds I'd have feed issues.  



Oddly enough, those craptactular magazines work flawlessly in my Sig522.  Go figure.

I have had mine since 2010. It has been very reliable and accurate. What I did NOT like was how flimsy the polymer upper is. It is easy to flex the barrel even with light pressure from a rest. I ended up swapping the poly receiver for an aluminum receiver and installed a free float handguard. Those two things really helped improve accuracy. I use the OEM 28 round magazines along with BDM 15 and 25 magazines without issue. The other things I did was to fill the charging handle with RTV (to keep cases from getting stuck) and added a pressure plug in the buffer tube.

For folks who have had these, what is the long term reliability?  Have you had any issues with parts breakage?  If so, have Chiappa people been pretty easy to work with when it came to getting replacement parts?  Finally, do these uppers use standard Ar-15 parts?  Can I replace the plastic handguards with drop in rails or replace the flash hider with something more menacing or a suppressor adapter?

The Chiappa M-4 dedicated 22 LR upper barrel is not threaded but the faux A-2 flash hider is held on by a set screw.  The fixed A-2 front sight is not pinned but held on by a set screw on the bottom.    You might be able to use a different hand guard patterned after the M-4 or remove the fixed front sight and use a float tube/MLok/Keymod of your choice.   I’d probably ditch the polymer receiver for an aluminum but by the time you do all this you’ve spent enough money to have built a quality CMMG/RTB upper.

I would just buy/build a CMMG upper if I had to do it over again. I have had my Chiappa upper for 10 years now and haven't had any issues with it. Like I said in my earlier post, it is far from stock anymore. I ditched the polymer receiver and used a free float handguard on my upper. Mine is an accurate barrel with CCI AR Tactical ammo.