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Posted: 8/4/2012 1:11:50 PM EDT
| So a little history with this rifle. All internal parts came from a Del-ton M4 kit. When I got it I started shooting mostly silver bear. It worked fine up until around 150-200 rounds then would have a FTE leaving a spent case in the chamber that had to be hammered out. Since then I installed the BCM extractor spring upgrade and a spikes st-2 buffer. Today I shot about 150 rounds of Remington UMC with no FTE which made me happy, but I'm going to leave the rifle dirty and see how long I can push the rifle to see if it starts jamming again. However today after one shot today I pulled the trigger again and "click." There was ammo in the mag but no round in the chamber. I racked the action and everyone other shot fired and functioned fine. It kind of bothers me that this one round did this. Do you think it is a possible short stroking problem? Underpowered round? Some might say its only 1 round don't worry about it but I'd really like a reliable rifle. I'm almost so fed up I'm about to just buy a BCM upper but I'd like to have a reliable set up with what I have right now as well. Thoughts are appreciated. Thanks |
Your an Idiot for not cleaning the rifle (chamber brush scrubbing the chamber by hand with CLP as a beginning) after shooting the rifle with coated steel ammo.
The coating on the ammo gets scrapped off the cases at both loading/unloading, and This powderized poly/lacquer/ plated fouling is going make it harder for a clean spent case extracting than normal. Worse yet, none of the standard solvents used for clean a rifle will break down this powderized/plating fouling, and again, it has to be scrubbed away by hand!!!!!! Next, this is not a AK-47, meaning that it not cobbled together by two dunking monkey that your lucky if you can hit something on the other side of the road, and better to just use the spray and pray method of Blazing the area hoping that the hand of Allah will guide the bullets to the evil infidels to strike them justly dead (and the Muslims that get caught in the cross fire/spray was just not a good Muslims, so no virgins for them), but instead a tighter tolerance rifle able to hit intended targets Hundreds of yards away with a single shot instead. Having said that, the rifle should be cleaned instead of left to rust for grins. If nothing else, at least remove the copper gilding from the rifle bore so it still tack drives, run a chamber brush by hand in the chamber to remove any build up there, and change the fouled CLP to clean CLP before abandoning the rifle to fend for it own against the elements.
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Quoted:
Your an Idiot for not cleaning the rifle (chamber brush scrubbing the chamber by hand with CLP as a beginning) after shooting the rifle with coated steel ammo. The coating on the ammo gets scrapped off the cases at both loading/unloading, and This powderized poly/lacquer fouling is going make it harder for a clean spent case extracting than normal. Worse yet, none of the standard solvents used for clean a rifle will break down this powderized fouling, and again, it has to be scrubbed awat by hand!!!!!! Next, this is not a AK-47, meaning that it not cobbled together by two dunking monkey that your lucky if you can hit something on the other side of the road, and better to just use the spray and pray method of Blazing the area hoping that the hand of Allah will guide the bullets to the evil infidels to strike them justly dead (and the Muslims that get caught in the cross fire/spray was just not a good Muslims, so no virgins for them), but instead a tighter tolerance rifle able to hit intended targets Hundreds of yards away with a single shot instead. Having said that, the rifle should be cleaned instead of left to rust for grins. If nothing else, at least remove the copper gilding from the rifle bore so it still tack drives, run a chamber brush by hand in the chamber to remove any build up there, and change the fouled CLP to clean CLP before abandoning the rifle to fend for it own against the elements. I did clean the rifle immediately after shooting steel through it. I didn't clean it this past weekend when I only shot Remington ammo through it. I am waiting until I shoot again next weekend to see if I can get it to jam again. If it doesnt then I'll clean it again then. Also the only steel I've shot through it was Silver Bear which is not a coated case. They are nickel plated steel cases. No polymer/laquer to come off in the chamber |
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Next, this is not a AK-47, meaning that it not cobbled together by two dunking monkey that your lucky if you can hit something on the other side of the road, and better to just use the spray and pray method of Blazing the area hoping that the hand of Allah will guide the bullets to the evil infidels to strike them justly dead (and the Muslims that get caught in the cross fire/spray was just not a good Muslims, so no virgins for them), but instead a tighter tolerance rifle able to hit intended targets Hundreds of yards away with a single shot instead. You crack me up, Dano. 
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Quoted:
Your an Idiot for not cleaning the rifle (chamber brush scrubbing the chamber by hand with CLP as a beginning) after shooting the rifle with coated steel ammo. The coating on the ammo gets scrapped off the cases at both loading/unloading, and This powderized poly/lacquer fouling is going make it harder for a clean spent case extracting than normal. Worse yet, none of the standard solvents used for clean a rifle will break down this powderized fouling, and again, it has to be scrubbed awat by hand!!!!!! Next, this is not a AK-47, meaning that it not cobbled together by two dunking monkey that your lucky if you can hit something on the other side of the road, and better to just use the spray and pray method of Blazing the area hoping that the hand of Allah will guide the bullets to the evil infidels to strike them justly dead (and the Muslims that get caught in the cross fire/spray was just not a good Muslims, so no virgins for them), but instead a tighter tolerance rifle able to hit intended targets Hundreds of yards away with a single shot instead. Having said that, the rifle should be cleaned instead of left to rust for grins. If nothing else, at least remove the copper gilding from the rifle bore so it still tack drives, run a chamber brush by hand in the chamber to remove any build up there, and change the fouled CLP to clean CLP before abandoning the rifle to fend for it own against the elements. this from a moderator? first off, silver bear has not a trace of polymer or laquer anywhere on it. second, calling the guy an idiot for asking for a little help seems way outta line. three, wtf does an ak have to do with the price of beans in china, i run ALOT of steel through my ar's and ive never had any issues at all. a chamber brush and 10 seconds of my time gets it as clean as using brass. who lit the fuse on your tampon? |
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I did clean the rifle immediately after shooting steel through it. I didn't clean it this past weekend when I only shot Remington ammo through it. I am waiting until I shoot again next weekend to see if I can get it to jam again. If it doesnt then I'll clean it again then. Also the only steel I've shot through it was Silver Bear which is not a coated case. They are nickel plated steel cases. No polymer/laquer to come off in the chamber The silver bear ammo is zinc plated, not nickle, but like any coating, it will be scrapped off on loading and unloading, end with it in the chamber in some fashion or another. Even brass ammo gets scrapped, ending up with flakes/pieces of it in the action, but the one thing going for it is that most copper solvents/CLP will at least attempt to dissolve/dislodge those deposits. Next we run into the fact that the gas system is dumping back into the B/C, being that fouling left here will want to bake onto the surface, and can problems when it gets bad enough. Lastly, we run into copper fouling in the barrel, and unless we want want use the rifle for spray and play (think Mac 10's when issued as service weapons), then keeping bore clean if a very, very importan items when it comes to the weapon and it long range effectiveness. Buts really back it up here, The lube and cleaner for 99% of the weapon is CLP. In CLP, there is an active cleaning that will dissolve gun powder fouling all by itself. If the rifle is just kept lubed, then the active cleaning agent is CLP will dissolve the gun powder fouling, leaving only the chamber and bore that need to be removed of other fouling. As stated, a chamber brush by hand takes case of the bore, and a quick solvent like Sweets will dissolve the copper in the bore without needing a lot of scrubbing. Note: here is the states, the least expensive form of CLP is BreakFreeclp in the 16oz spray can. If such is not offered in your country, them check around since of the local suppliers should be caring it under another manufacturers name and branding instead. So if you want to do some long term shooting or extended period testing in the rifle, then at least get into the habit of pulling the charging handle back about an inch to get the gas rings in front of the bolt exhaust ports, add a few drops of CLP into the gas section of the B/C through the exhaust ports, then dry cycling the action a few times to migrate the fresh CLP through the system/upper bearing surfaces (about every few hundred rounds, and/or before you put the rifle aside rode hard and left for dead). This way, at least the fresh CLP is going to town on dissolving the gun powder fouling, and it just the chamber and bore that you have to worry about. Simply, this platform is going to take a bit more maintenance than some other battle designs that can be run hard and left for dead; expecting them to continue to run afterwards. The design is a bit more complex, but designed this way to place shots down range more accurately. If you just do your part to maintain the rifle, then it will run and preform without flaw. Get laze on such, and your going to run into problems, such as you have found. |
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I did clean the rifle immediately after shooting steel through it. I didn't clean it this past weekend when I only shot Remington ammo through it. I am waiting until I shoot again next weekend to see if I can get it to jam again. If it doesnt then I'll clean it again then. Also the only steel I've shot through it was Silver Bear which is not a coated case. They are nickel plated steel cases. No polymer/laquer to come off in the chamber The silver bear ammo is zinc plated, not nickle, but like any coating, it will be scrapped off on loading and unloading, end with it in the chamber in some fashion or another. Even brass ammo gets scrapped, ending up with flakes/pieces of it in the action, but the one thing going for it is that most copper solvents/CLP will at least attempt to dissolve/dislodge those deposits. Next we run into the fact that the gas system is dumping back into the B/C, being that fouling left here will want to bake onto the surface, and can problems when it gets bad enough. Lastly, we run into copper fouling in the barrel, and unless we want want use the rifle for spray and play (think Mac 10's when issued as service weapons), then keeping bore clean if a very, very importan items when it comes to the weapon and it long range effectiveness. Buts really back it up here, The lube and cleaner for 99% of the weapon is CLP. In CLP, there is an active cleaning that will dissolve gun powder fouling all by itself. If the rifle is just kept lubed, then the active cleaning agent is CLP will dissolve the gun powder fouling, leaving only the chamber and bore that need to be removed of other fouling. As stated, a chamber brush by hand takes case of the bore, and a quick solvent like Sweets will dissolve the copper in the bore without needing a lot of scrubbing. Note: here is the states, the least expensive form of CLP is BreakFreeclp in the 16oz spray can. If such is not offered in your country, them check around since of the local suppliers should be caring it under another manufacturers name and branding instead. So if you want to do some long term shooting or extended period testing in the rifle, then at least get into the habit of pulling the charging handle back about an inch to get the gas rings in front of the bolt exhaust ports, add a few drops of CLP into the gas section of the B/C through the exhaust ports, then dry cycling the action a few times to migrate the fresh CLP through the system/upper bearing surfaces (about every few hundred rounds, and/or before you put the rifle aside rode hard and left for dead). This way, at least the fresh CLP is going to town on dissolving the gun powder fouling, and it just the chamber and bore that you have to worry about. Simply, this platform is going to take a bit more maintenance than some other battle designs that can be run hard and left for dead; expecting them to continue to run afterwards. The design is a bit more complex, but designed this way to place shots down range more accurately. If you just do your part to maintain the rifle, then it will run and preform without flaw. Get laze on such, and your going to run into problems, such as you have found. You are correct it is a zinc plating. I stand corrected. Don't get me wrong I take very good care of my weapons and run both a powder/lead solvent through as well as a copper solvent and break down the bolt completely as well to clean. The only reason I left tthe rifle dirty is I want to see how far I can push it with the new extractor spring installed until it fails on me again. I want to get this as reliable as possible and unfortunately I don't have the money to run 1,500 rounds through the gun in one day so I'll be taking it out 2-3 times with out cleaning firing a total of around 600 rounds to see if I can get a failure. I've never had a cartridge stick in the chamber with brass ammo, so next time I go I'm going to shoot steel through it to see if I can get it to stick again. Does anyone have any ideas why my rifle would have skipped over one round out of a 30 round mag with around 7 rounds left? Do you think the buffer is too heavy? Or round was underpowered? |
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Dano, Way to have some class. Good thing you're not affiliated with ar15.com in any sort of professional role....OH WAIT. Name calling (whilst using horrible grammar none the less) a new member with honest technical questions. Classy. Also, the term is "spray and pray" as in, you spray rounds out, and pray they hit their target. If this was GD, sure. But this guy's got a question and is looking for help. You're representing AR15.com with that moderator badge, and you just did a great job of making yourself look like an asshole. I'm sure AR15.com as a whole appreciates it. To help the OP, You're having issues because the amount of gas coming back is not enough to fully cycle the weapon. You either need more gas (stronger ammo, bigger gas port, longer dwell time, etc) or less resistance against that gas (lighter buffer/spring, well lubed bcg, etc). Good luck. |
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Dano, Way to have some class. Good thing you're not affiliated with ar15.com in any sort of professional role....OH WAIT. Name calling (whilst using horrible grammar none the less) a new member with honest technical questions. Classy. Also, the term is "spray and pray" as in, you spray rounds out, and pray they hit their target. If this was GD, sure. But this guy's got a question and is looking for help. You're representing AR15.com with that moderator badge, and you just did a great job of making yourself look like an asshole. I'm sure AR15.com as a whole appreciates it. To help the OP, You're having issues because the amount of gas coming back is not enough to fully cycle the weapon. You either need more gas (stronger ammo, bigger gas port, longer dwell time, etc) or less resistance against that gas (lighter buffer/spring, well lubed bcg, etc). Good luck. Thanks for the advice! I am now thinking it was perhaps a mistake going with that ST-2 buffer. I just got so caught up in all the posts I've read on ARFOCM about how terrible the carbine design is and if you don't have a middy gas system on a BCM or greater quality rifle your rifle sucks blah blah blah haha. I also just bought some 5.56 M855 rounds so hopefully the higher pressures of that cartidge will help out. When I had the extraction problems earlier on I was considering replacing the whole BCG with a BCM one however from my understand the M16 BCG is even heavier than my current semi BCG design which might make this problem even worse. Well I guess since it was only 1 round that it happened on I'll try running some steel through it (pretty underpowered, dirty cartidges as I understand) and see if I can force some extraction problems again or short stroking and report back with my findings. Thanks for all the support! |
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generalzip, understand that the trade off you made by installing the extra tension to the extractor can work both ways (for and against you).
Yes, it will prevent the spent case rim from slipping off the extractor on a hard pull extraction, but at some point with the chamber fouled up, the case is going to bind to the chamber walls instead; ending with either the bolt not cycling back, or the the extractor just ripping the spent case rim off, leaving that spent case still stuck in the chamber. So yes, the extra tension on the extractor is working for you to help you go a tad longer before you stick a case, but when you do stick a case again, it's going to be much harder to get it out this next time. Bottom line it here, the reason that you stuck a case in the first place was due to the chamber being fouled. So we are back at square one, being keep the rifle maintained to prevent sticking a case in the first place. As for buffer weight goes, if the bolt is locking back on the bolt catch on the last round out of the mag, the stroke is fine with the added buffer mass. |
| The bolt is staying back on the last round. I think it was just maybe one bad round that didn't have enough powder or whatnot. I understand the issue with the extractor however I was getting stuck cases within 150 rounds which is unnaceptable by my standards of reliability. And that was with a clean rifle. The extractor tension has helped with rounds getting stuck so far and I also have never had an extractor rip of a rim. In fact if this did occur I would be satisfied that the extractor is working properly and the rifle just needs to be cleaned. I think what I'm going to do is test this rifle to make sure it works well again and sell off the upper and use those funds plus some laying around to buy a BCM mid-length upper. Hopefully someone will want to buy a relatively lightly used Del-Ton upper with MI handguard. Thanks again for all your help Dano! |
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No worries, and I wouldn't be in such a rush to sell off the upper.
With a combo of break in (semi rough/new'ish chamber self polishing in through live fire, maybe some burs on the feed ramps doing the same, and even the rest of the anodized to parkerized parts mating in as well), may find that in a few hundred rounds, all the teething problems of the upper may just go away. If Nothing else, then give the rifle a once over to check for burs to try to minimize the cases being scrapped hard to begin with. Starting with the barrel feed ramps, check the ends of of the ramps and if needed, polish off any burs found there (small wooden dowel with 400 wet/dry sand paper works well if you don't want to remove the barrel from the upper. Next, check the ejector channel ridge on the bolt face for a high ridge. The bolt face is going to rotate on the back of the rim still pressure bound to the chamber until the pull, and if there is a ridge bur, it can scrap the case hard as well. Talking about the bolt rotating on the spent round before the bolt unlocks on the pull, take a look at the extractor as well. Often, the side edges of the grabbing claw, and even the end section of the rim relief in the below the claw have burs, and these two can scrap the plating off the cases during the rotation before the pull. Then we come to mag, and without knowing which type you are running, always best to just pull the mag apart and clean it up when they are brand new. CLP works great for the part, but do check the bottom of the mag feed lips and the front inside edge for nasty burs as well. Cheers, Dano |
| My opinion,show Dano523 some respect,he has forgotten more about the AR than a lot on here will ever learn!!! If he wants to blow off some steam then so be it,he has earned that,and as a mod here has the right and ability to gavel heads! Dano523 has been nothing but helpful,and insightful to me since I have been a part of this forum! GT27 |
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GT27, no need to gild anything in my behalf.
Anyone that has been here on the site long enough, remembers the battles between the AR/Verses the AK system. With what the opt was asking, could see the writing on the wall with all that starting up again, and why I joking called him an idiot out the gate (guess the smiley face at the end of my post was not enough, so went back and added it directly after the first line as well). Trust me, it takes a lot to get under my skin. Furthermore, Being PC is not one of the things that I do. In real life, I work in environments that a single mistake will cost someone life, and being Kinder and gentler really does not get the imitate point across at all with the lads that work under me, nor with most people I have found as well (My office is based out of NYC, so do the math since busting someone balls is really just a joke conversation starter anyway). Someone want to be PC and wear kid gloves while posting about a subject, not a problem. Others want to be a lot more direct, not a problem again. Bottom line, time and time again I have stated that pro/ con arguments are more than welcome here on the forum, so long as you establish the self truth of your part of the argument and not just one lining without any back up support of why you take a stand either way. So on that note, did I come off a tad rough jokily with the opt, maybe, but if you get past that part, thought that I had some fun with the rest of my first post getting my point across on the importance of why to keep the rifle clean. Truth be told, had I had more time when responding on that first post, was going to paste in the copy of the M-16 cleaning comic book as well (can just see it know, not only would have someone been offended by the idiot remark, but would have comments as well on how I was belittling the opt even more by adding in the comic book version of the cleaning manual too). |
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Guys no worries haha. No offense was taken. I just came to get some advice from guys that have run these rifles much more than I. It was probably my fault for not being clear enough about my background, experience, or my methodology. I understand the importance of keeping a rifle clean and I always do. This one time was an exception to see if I could repeat the failures I was getting before after around 200 rounds. I made some upgrade to parts on the rifle and wanted to see if I fixed the problem. Unfortunately I don't have the budget to fire off 500 rounds in one day so the rifle had to go dirty for a few weeks until I can get out to the range again. I appreciate all the advice thus far and have learned a lot from reading the posts on ARFCOM. So anyways, no harm done and thanks for the advice gents.
-Steve |
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