Today, I finally assembled my generation 1 POF billet receiver from 2007. Talk about your procrastination...
The first thing I noticed was that it was WAY tougher to assemble than your run of the mill PSA budget forged lower. That trigger guard roll pin did NOT want to go in, and I have the tool to press them into place. My next area of woe was the PSA 3.5 pound single stage "drop in" trigger. Yeah, it didn't want to drop in and I literally needed to hammer the anti walk pins into the receiver because they wouldn't even start by hand! Also, lining up that "drop-in" trigger with the trigger pin holes in the receiver was a bit of a chore. My final woe was the safety selector in that it had a lot of slop and required some sanding/fitting of the safety detent to get it to work properly. Basically, the detent was hanging in the channel leading up to the selector switch.
All in all, I was fairly disappointed for something that was a premium in 2007. Let's put it this way, even my POF forged lower was easier to assemble than this POF billet lower was. I don't know if it was the anodizing that was off or if it was just slightly out of spec all around, but I expected better for something that was $230 back in 2007 compared to the $90 Doublestar lowers that I used back then.
The only good news is that I function fitted my Magpul PMags and they seem to work properly with this lower. That was one of the things that I was told could be a potential issue due to the way some magazine wells were improperly finished on the POF early gen billet lowers.