11W,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I was out of town.
Quoted:
Quoted: The thing that got me over the AR hump was actually experiencing the reliability of modern examples. I've field tested my "frankengun" enough to know that it'll take abuse and keep ticking. I can comfortably comprimise on the caliber (not a huge fan of 5.56) because of the light weight and lack of recoil.
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I think that may be it. I was trained by and worked with enough vets of Beirut and Viet Nam to believe to my very soul that the M-16 series is capable of outstanding accuracy (my 500m group in boot could have been covered by a large cantaloupe) but they have to be kept meticulously clean to function.
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Meticulously clean, no. I will clean my chamber after shooting 1k of Wolf, or when I have a bug up my ass, or when we do it as a group in a carbine class. Otherwise, it gets rained on, thrown in puddles (is that cleaning?
), tossed in fields (some of the WI crew has a sadistic streak when it comes to "function testing" their guns and optics), etc.
ETA: Links to Photoman and MisterPX's "function testing" (I only let him throw my gun twice to "test" my Tacpoint and mount):
SPOT optic testing I have never actually tried to use one that had been dragged through the mud. Even in Desert Storm we took to using panty-hose to help keep the dust in the action to a minimum.
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I haven't tested my AR in desert conditions, but that's just because those conditions are kind of hard to come by in WI.
That is incidently how I came to respect the incredible durability of the AK. I got to fire examples where the bolt was so rusted I had to put the butt of the weapon on the ground and stomp the bolt handle to cycle the action. Once open though, you could cycle it by hand and insert a magazine. Firing it seemed to knock the rest of the rust and dirt loose and it functioned fine after that. Accuracy sucked but talk about tough!
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I've got one of those too. They are indeed the toughest guns on the planet (except maybe for HK's, MHO). Bout the only thing I wouldn't expect an AR to survive would be to buried for a decade, and be GTG right afterward.
But I digress, tell me what the worst condition it was in and still came up shooting. Something just seems so wrong about venting propellent gasses back into the parts that should be the cleanest. How dirty can you let it get before it stops? I have always kept the ones I was issued very clean ( not that I really had a choice ) and part of that was talking to people who left friends in Viet Nam because an M-16 got fouled. I decided early on my weapon would be cleaner than me if necessary. So I have never really tested any AR under adverse conditions. How well do they hold up? Thanks for your time, gentlemen.
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I can only speak of my gun. Model 1 14.5/PermFH M4gery on a Stag lower. Non-chrome lined barrel and chamber, almost exclusively shoot Wolf (very dirty ammo) through it. I can get about 1250 rounds of Wolf through with no cleaning until I start to get FTE's. Swab the chamber (only) and I'm GTG for another 1250 or so. I tend to clean the chamber after each half-case now, but nothing else except maybe a bore-snake through it, and some lube on the B/BC (it was last cleaned thouroghly in July or August of 2005, when I painted it).
I've gone through 500 rounds of Wolf that had been left in a wet ammo can (rusting) for about a month. 5 or 6 rounds required the cleaning rod to get out. Mind you, I didn't even wipe off the cases, in some instances, they still had wet paper attached to them:
I've done rollover prone to the strong side (ejection port 2" or so from the ground) and blasted away in, on, and around (and occaisionally dropped my rifle) in everything from snow to peagravel. No problems.
Greg Sullivan demonstrating the position (not my rifle, but it should give you the idea of the potential for debris to enter the gun):
I've mentioned the puddle. Here's what the bolt looked like after that (again, 'twas functioning just fine):
MisterPX has had some fun tossing my rifle into plowed corn fields. No problem.
If you keep the dustcover shut and a mag in the rifle...I can't think of anything other than blowing sand that would gum up the works sufficiently to make a (modern and properly built) AR to stop working.
There's the rub: An awful lot of "franken guns" are poorly built with out-of-spec components. The military issue M16's aren't a lot better (due to use). My first experience with AR's was a disaster; a freind's dad had built up 4 examples just prior to the 94 AWB:
A surplus A1 upper on a PWA lower. FTF/FTE's (turns out the ammo was handloaded crap).
A 16" CAR on a Colt lower. Non-functioning (missing buffer detent, which was stuck in the FCG).
A 7" Oly pistol (while that should be enough to understand that it didn't function, I'll go one further: It was short-stroking, like damn near every pistol does).
A 16" A3 bull barrel. Short Stroking (had a WD-40 tube stuck inside the gas tube).
All were
soaked in WD-40 as lubricant.
I've managed to get all but the pistol running 100%, and I'm sure-as-hell not a qualified armorer. Bottom line: If you've got a properly built AR, it wil take 99.99% of the abuse you can dish out, most likely with nothing more than a little lube and a clean chamber.
One more thing: I mentioned "modern" examples. I too heard the horror stories of M16's in VietNam. Those rifles had issues (non-spec chambers, wrong propellent, etc.) where modern examples don't. The AR15/M16 family of weapons has come a long way in 40+ years.
By all means, if you're in SE or SW WI, come out to one of out Hometown shoots. Seeing is believing. I'm an HK guy when it comes to rifles, but coming out to an Arfcom shoot changed my mind when it came to ARs (not an easy thing to do). The vast majority of the ARs I came in contact with that weekend out ran even the AK's present. I did the research and built several of my own. The AR will function dirty just fine*.
*Caviat: An AR built for "field use" will function. Match/bench rest guns with tight chambers are much more suseptible to dirt/dirty ammo: Even so, I've seen full mags of Wolf get bump-fired through them, too.