Hello, I'm YAL (Yet Another Lurker) who is coming up for air in this gargantuan storehouse of info to make his first post. My first question:

Out of the plethora of vendors that will sell me lower parts kits, who actually knows where their products come from?

To expand: If I were to purchase a lower parts kit from Federal Arms Corp. (FAC) in MN, I would be purchasing a lower kit that was made by DPMS. If I got one from Model 1 sales, J&T, M and A parts, etc. - Where do their parts come from?

My caution is due to being exposed to quite a few opinions of board members who all seem to warn that "out of mil-spec" or "chinese" parts are bad, bad, bad, and should be avoided at all costs.

Will you help me avoid this?

Thanks in advance for your help....

PS: at this time I am not looking for a "these guys are better" response, that will be a future question...   :)

FWIW, I've used several lower parts kits from Model 1 without any problems. The advertise that they use only US-made parts, so the "chinese" issue should not be a problem. The lower parts kits offered by DPMS, JT Distributing, Bushmaster, RRA etc. are also good.

Welcome. [:)]

Your question is a good one, and I've found the answer that works for me is that there's not enough savings in the non-brand-name parts to justify the time spent in researching "who sells what, and where it comes from."  Bushmaster is [i]so[/i] easy to order from, and they are a known quality level.

Best of luck, and have fun!

Ellery:

Conversely, one doesn't have to go out of their way to seek out Colt/Armalite/BM for small parts; if you're at a gun show where Model 1 or JT Distributing has a booth (every one of 'em, here in IN), you'd do better to pick them up there.

Problem I have with BM is the $13.00 shipping charge they tack onto ANY order! So if I just need a couple small items, it's not economically feasible to order from them. I'd sooner go to Brownells; at least they have a wider variety of stuff I can use to "flesh out" my order. :-)

Thank you muchly for the input guys! Its good to have a living resource here at ar15.com.

I will begin a post in Build it yourself once I have finished my research and gathered parts for my first build. As far as lower receiver parts, I am thinking of getting just about any brand right now that has all US made parts that can save me a few bucks on the shipping if I buy other stuff as well....

Thanks again!

i'd get the dpms kit.  bushmaster is too expensive and have plastic trigger guards.