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Posted: 2/20/2010 12:18:53 PM EDT
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OK, I've seen plenty of AR-15's in my day, but the only ones I have ever seen jam up have been M4gery carbines. In fact, despite the M16's jam-happy reputation, I understand that after the 601 and 602 series these problems were pretty much gone from the rifles from that point on. But, the general public probably doesn't know what a Model 601 is, so the bad reputation kinda sticks with the series.
This morning I took my A1 clone out to the 200meter range to fine tune the zero a bit. When I finished, I decided that since I had lots of ammo, and time, and I didn't want to haul it all home, I might as well go shoot it. So I went off to one of the 25 yard ranges to do some fun stuff, double taps, etc. When I get there theres some pistol shooters, a few .22 shooters, and two kids with an M4gery complete with quad rails and a vertical grip. I picked a bench next to them and got chuckled at when my A1 came out of the case. *MY* rifle went through about 100 rounds without so much as a hiccup. HIS rifle had something go wrong with it just about every magazine. They stopped laughing quickly. A year or so back I saw a local cop show up at a tactical-rifle match (Kinda like IDPA, IPSC, or USPSA with rifles instead of pistols) with his brand new M4gery, with about $2500 worth of rails, optics, lasers, slings, and bi-grip-pod-things mounted on it. He was unable to complete the first stage, out of 8 or 9 targets, he had hits on only 2 of them. The rifle constantly jammed, double fed, failed to eject...Anything and everything that could go wrong, went wrong. He was so frustrated that after three attempts, none better than the first, he threw his rifle on a table and quit. Another shooter loaned him a bare bones M4 that completed the match with only one or two hiccups. So I have to ponder...Why is it that all of these countries still using old A1 rifles, or our troops armed with A1 rifles or derivatives (A2, A3, and A4), seem to have no freaking problem keeping their weapons running and fighting in conditions that range from waterlogged tropical jungles, to hellish cold, to the dusty inferno of sandy deserts.... But the tacti-cool carbines won't operate reliably on a rifle range in The States? |
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I gotta wonder who put those carbines together. I've never had a jam or any other stoppage with my rra, and I know of a lot of other name brands that run flawlessly. As for the cop at your tactical shoot, was it lubed properly? Was it broke in? While I didn't break mine in some rifles benifit from breaking in with hot 5.56. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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First guess is how they take care of it. I am a cleaning Nazi and as such, I've never had a problem no matter where I carried an M-16 into be it snow, swamps, jungles or deserts. Mine have always worked so that's my first guess.
Next guess would be shooters using crappy magazines or ammo. Even for practice, I stick with M193 or M855 ammo only. Wolf and other cheap ammo like that is reserved for my SAR-3. It flings cases so far that being able to recover it for reloading is a pain so the crappy non-reloadable ammo is what that rifle gets fed. As far as magazines go, it's USGI or P-mags only. No USA magazines, no pro-mags or other cheap knock-off mags for me. Third guess is they are using a parts gun with questionable parts used in the build. Now I use parts guns as well (hell, both my retros use Nodak Spud lowers so that would qualify as a parts gun right there no matter how many USGI parts they have in them) however, I stick with good quality parts and I've never had any problems with any builds. If you go with cheap, shitty parts, you are going to cheap, shitty performance. If you insist on cheap parts, don't bitch about cheap performance, just suck it up and be happy you don't have much money into your paperweight. |
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You can't just compare your gun to any M4 style AR. There are a lot of good carbine length AR's on the market that will run all day long.
The problem comes in when people or companies build these guns out of spec....incorrect gas port, chamber, buffer, or bolt carrier will screw a carbine length system up every time. A rifle length system is less sensitive to these variables. People go out and buy a $500 AR and think it is "just as good as" but can't figure out why the gun craps out in less than 1K rounds. Personally, I have gone to the midlength system on both of my 16" guns. They shoot softer, run reliably, and are a lot easier on parts. |
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The 601 and 602 didn't have the reliability problems. It was the 603 after Colt ramped up production for Uncle Sam.
I've seen a couple of those M4gery carbines have trouble, I don't think the owners had broken them in though. They were name brand from reputable companies, the guys who had them didn't know anything about ARs. Just jumped in after the Obama scare. Should have offered them a few hundred to take them off their hands  .
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| There are plenty of M4geries and the like that are owned and operated by people who know what they're doing, and the rifles run just fine. But you are more likely to see such malfunctioning because the more modern, tacticool configurations are the VolksARs of today. Anyone who has a retro has to have paid some attention. |
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Quoted:
There are plenty of M4geries and the like that are owned and operated by people who know what they're doing, and the rifles run just fine. But you are more likely to see such malfunctioning because the more modern, tacticool configurations are the VolksARs of today. Anyone who has a retro has to have paid some attention. More likely to be something like a DPMS where corners were cut. |
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Quoted:
...Was it lubed properly? Was it broke in?... Lubed properly I'm sure of. Broken in, well, I think those may well have been his first shots with it other than a rough zero. Originally Posted By AFSOC_COP but snipped to hell to get to what Der_Hans wants to talk about:
...parts gun with questionable parts... ...parts guns... Honestly, I only consider rifles to be "Parts guns" if they have been assembled by taking apart groups of used firearms and putting the pieces back together at random. The manufacturers we think of contract out anyway. I consider any AR-15 assembled using new components from however many manufacturers to be a complete and matching rifle. AR-15's become 'parts guns' when they are built using one or more USED parts from one or more AR-15's. In the specific case of retro builds, however, I think I'd allow for some exceptions. If you used new condition surplus upper halves or new condition barrels removed from one of those style upper halves, I would probably consider the completed rifle to be new/matching as long as all the parts that went into it were new condition. ...If that makes any sense...I'm used to thinking of "Parts guns" in relation to surplus rifles, where a parts gun is one that doesn't have matching numbers on all the places it should have matching numbers... |
| My Colt A2 jammed every 30 rounds or so till I took a power drill and a cleaning brush to the chamber and used a pipe straw on the gas tube. 20 years of crrrrrraaaaaapppppp in there. My stag 2T fired 200-250 rounds of steel case RIGHT out of the box after some CLP was sprayed on the bolt. |
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I was a little apprehensive when OlGunner and I sighted in my XM16E1 which has a real XM16E1 upper dated 1966. I really didn't know what to expect. I am running the later (current) wine-colored buffer and a chrome bolt with parked M16 carrier, and it ran through a mixture of ammo including two types of brass-cased and Brown Bear steel cased w/o a hiccup. As it broke in the ejection pattern changed a bit, with the pile of casings ending up at about 5 o'clock. Since this was the model they had so much trouble with, I was thinking it might have issues, but not so. As far as headspace, it cleared the USGI field gage but I didn't have a no-go to try. It ate everything w/o an issue, and wasn't even that hard to clean - I give the chrome bolt credit for that.
From what I've read, slowing down the gas impulse on carbines can help greatly, and different carbines may like different weight buffers. A heavier buffer helps with bolt bounce in an overgassed carbine. I guess what I'm saying is carbines take a little more knowledge and patience sometimes to make reliable - something Joe Citizen may have precious little of. I put my rifles together using the best quality parts I could find (off the EE yes) and they are parts guns technically, but they have good quality parts. It'll be interesting to see how my first carbine build runs (if I ever get the barrel work done!). I think I'll take an A1 stock assy to the range w/me in case I have issues - that way I can try the heavier buffer thing and see if that solves the problem. That's why you see pics of XM177E1's with A1 stocks. |
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I am running the later (current) wine-colored buffer and a chrome bolt with parked M16 carrier... ...give the chrome bolt credit for that. Isn't the wine color buffer one that replicates the weight of the Edgewater buffers that they replaced? As for the chrome bolt/parked carrier, I honestly think that THAT is how all of the M-16/AR-15 rifles should be shipped from the factory. The chrome carrier seems to be mostly an appearance thing, but the chrome bolt really makes a big difference in cleaning. All of my builds from here on out will be with chrome bolts. That's why you see pics of XM177E1's with A1 stocks.
I have to say the 607 looks pretty damn cool with an A1 stock on it too. |
| I've never had any reliability problems with any of my AR's, and I had over 30 of them before I started selling them to make the rent. I assembled all of them, modern and retro, and they all shot well out of the blocks, except for the 2 times I forgot to pin the gas tubes. I'm not saying I'm a great builder, I'm saying that AR's are typically reliable in my limited experience. |
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