I am new to the forum and new to building a AR-15. I am stepping out of the 308 bolt action and into the varmints Being a lefty i thought an AR wouldbe a good way to go

Before someone tells me not to post here. I am looking into building a Varmint rifle based on a EA J-15 Preban Recevier (which i already have) and there are some questions

1, i have heard about pin sizes and that there are different ones.

2, What pins do i have to measure to find out.

3 recommendations to a good varmint upper that will match grey parkerizing.

If i need to post thes questions somewhere else please tell me which one

thanks

ya can post it here, but when ppl build ARs, there is another section jus for building, but either way your prob, fine.

THe take down pin size was an issue with COLT. unless ya have an old colt upper and/or lower you fine, they are the only ones AFAIK that use odd pin size.


also it will be hard to get finish to match when puttin 2 seperate peices together from diff. manufactors.

As far as good Varmint uppers, i would say Bushmaster heavy barrel 20" , i am a bushmaster fan, they are chrome lined barrels and rated at 5.56, instead of some others that are only rated at .223 (do research to see diff.)

The only thing to worry about with pin sizes is the late model colts and its only the fire control parts.Your EA lower,Eagle Arms I assume should take the standard size pins and parts.For color match,Bushmaster,RockRiver and Armalite all seem to be black more than grey.Bushmaster makes a great product but they are a little pricey.For the barrel where its gonna be a varmint gun I supose chrome lining wont matter so you can go stainless steel with a match grade chamber.If I were you I would use the pre ban lower for a M4 type carbine and maybe just buy a complete varmint rifle from bushmaster or rock river.If you use the preban lower you could always build it into a flat top free float barrel in carbine legnth with a colapsable stock because with the preban you can have a carbine varmint or full size and if you dont like stainless you could keep it chrome lined 5.56 chamber to eat any ammo and can have a barrel with a flash hider that way you can have a rifle for varmint shooting or combat or you can have 2 different uppers 1 for varmint and 1 for battle and you could go long 20" or as short as 14.5" with a phantom suppresor permanently attached try these sites  www.bushmaster.com  www.rockriverarms.com  or www.armalite.com  DPMS is also a good site www.dpmsinc.com,you just have to decide for what purposes you are going to use the rifle for and then go from there.With a pre ban you can do just about any add on to it.

Yeah i was wondering about finishes matching with different metals. I have no colt stuff

The rifle is a EA J-15 preban A1 20" light barrel. got it for 600.00 with 5 green follower 30rd mags. I figured this was a good enough of a deal to snatch up into the AR realm

See that is what i was thinking. for now I will have one lower that does both, one upper for varmint and another for plinking. Then down the road i will just build a lower to match the varmint and leave the pre-ban lower with the 16"

EA is Essentail Arms. Bought out by DPMS in 93 or 94 i think. so just about all j-15s i would think are pre-ban.

Oh essential then they "DPMS" may have something closer to a match in color for you.Is your lower cast or forged?the way to tell is look into the magwell and in the inside front there should be a small trench machined out for the whole legnth of the magwell,I know DPMS arms uses forgings now and castings,not that there will be a problem if not,I just think forgings are stronger.I know other companies like olympic will make a new forged lower with your old serial# for a $100 but its only with their rifles I dont know if DPMS does.And for 600 forged or not thats a good deal.

Oh and by the way welcome aboard

welcome!

I wont be able to tell if its forged until the 27th whne my friend is bringing it up. See i bought it for 600 and then traded it to a friend for another gun and now we are trading back. so its coming home.

I had already emailed DPMS about the receiver questions on fit to an upper so i am waiting there answer back. it is a lesser know name but it shot just fine with now problems and was doing about 2" groups @200yds W scope. So i figured it wasnt a bad deal at all.

Do i need ot measure the hinge pin to see what uppers will work. All problems i have read about seem to fall to the older colts I figured i may same problem since i have an older A1 receiver

I could be wrong but I would say if its a push pin front it should be standard size,not sure of the exact dimension,But your right even older colt uppers may have the larger screw front even though it had spec firecontrol pins and parts,Oh and welcome aboard!!And an A1 upper,if theres no shell deflector on it and the lower is also A1 with no reinforcements like an M16A1 just semi-auto I would build it into an XM177E2,now that would be an excellent piece.

if it's grey colored (which it probably is) you can get it refinshed for $45 @ lauer custom weaponry (they're on the industry forums on this site). it will be black and their turnaround is super fast.  i had them refinish 2 lowers this spring, one of which was grey like yours (it was a dpms preban).