ive had no problems with mine.  it seems everyone has some rumor they heard about oly thoough.  whats the deal?

I know its me you are mad at, so i'll explain.

My preban Oly is pretty rough. I dont like their old rifles. The new ones look like they are a better build, but still the reputation lives on. I like chrome lining, and I think that groove at the end of the barrel is silly.

Nowdays, they ought to be nice rifles. But for a while they will have to live with their rep.

Oly's receivers use to be carved out of rough casts. The quality was OK, but a majority of the receivers had to be mated/fitted together.  Now they are running a top notch operation with newer CNC machines, and ALL their receivers fit together perfectly right off the assembly line. They are turning out products that are nothing like when they started out.

They are also a gun company to support for RKBA.  S&W, Ruger and [i][b]COLT[/i][/b] have let us down.  Oly wont. Oly makes a good product, support'em!

Olys are good thinking about trading my Diamond Back for one!  Any takers!

 Bob  [:d]

Oly's are fine, I prefer the SS uppers myself, just like the SS I guess. I have two and they work fine, some guys just like the Bushy name, although they make a fine AR also. The only real AR that I ever saw that looked crummy was one by Heese. It could have just been a lemon cause I don't see alot of those, just that one, which made me think if I ever was interested I would go over it with a fine tooth comb. The chrome lined chamber and BBL has advantages but is not a real need item, although it was when they first came out and were used in the  bush.

Never had any problems with my pre-ban OlyArms M.F.R.

Scott

i have a post ban Oly.

my stepson bought a PCR kit from them and assembled it on an Oly lower i gave him and he loves it.

no problems out of either weapon.

coltc.

I remember when Oly used to make various "high end" competition barrels. What ever happened to that?

I know about 5 years ago, every new Oly I looked at, it seemed like it needed some work to smooth things out. They just felt cheap.

Raf wrote "With all due respect, OLY's greed and stupidity got millions of rounds of cheap, steel-cored Chinese ammo declared contraband. All because OLY insisted on marketing a firearm in pistol configuration that used such ammo."

Let's put this to rest... Thompson Center is the all time king of making pistols in rifle cartridge chamberings.  There was also the Remington bolt action pistols, and a few other makers.  You can't blame it on Oly.  You can blame it on the people writing these stupid laws, and the ATF for their "interpretation" of these laws.  Let's lay blame where it belongs.

(Edited to add) And my preban and post ban Oly's are very nice, no quality issues.

A lot of the Oly bashing is by people who have never actually owned one.  Their input is always of the rumor mill form, "well, I've heard blah blah blah."

My own experience with 2 Oly prebans is that they are excellent rifles.  No problems with fit or finish, no mag or FTF problems, and plenty accurate enough.

Right now I have a preban DPMS upper on an Oly preban lower.  Nice and tight lockup, reliable, and shoots very well.

I can't complain.

I bought one complete rifle, two stripped lowers, and one parts kit from Oly.  Had problems with all of it. taught me alot about troubleshooting the AR15 rifle though.

RAF, I don't think OLY sold more than a few 7.62X39 "pistols". There were several other companies that produced similar weapons, Minute Man Arms, or Patriot Arms or something similar out of Colorado supposedly made something like 1,000 7.62 "pistols".

The ATF used OLY as a scapegoat.

OLY is a "quirky" company. They make some great high end stuff, SUM barrels, SS barrels, billet AL recievers, berylium(sp) recivers etc.  But they also hang their hat on making inexpensive rifles. They also didn't sell insulated handguards for a while.

Some of their stuff is neat, some isn't. OLY also apparently has a lot of hit-miss in the QC. Plus there is a real Chevy-Ford thing in AR brands. Lots of people can't feel good about their brand unless they point out how much better it is than brand X.

OLY is often brand X. It's funny though, as time goes by, Bushmaster is starting to produce stuff more like OLY's, non-chrome lined barrels, SS barrels, and OLY is starting to look more like Bushy, without the purple tinge.

It's a win-win for the customer, as long as you know what you want and who sells it.

I like carrots. However, Oly's support sucks. It took them 1 year to service my 9mm upper and return it to me. The problem was with the bolt. They could have just replaced the bolt and sent it back in on week. Instead, they re-welded the bolt and sent it back almost 1 year to the day!

I sold it and ain't never buying another Oly product.

I'm an OLY "Plinker" owner, just got it about three months ago. I only have 26 years of M-16 expereince in the field from Cambodia to other exotic locations so my opinion is worth nothing but, I would load it up and pack it with me on the next insertion any day if I still could do that sort of thing. But since I just play now it's a blast to use and shoot. I agree with the previous posts about the chevy-ford thing, It's black and it looks good, and it shoots what I point it at, when I want it to. So what's the problem? If you want it, go get it and have fun with it. Their lifetime warranty is a big plus!

No one has ever had to use the warranty on your Ford-Chevy right?

People have, in the past, ragged on Oly here on AR15.com because of who has represented OlyArms here before.  Since he's been gone, it seems there's been a lot less of that here.

I'm sure that like all manufacturers, Oly has some good rifles and bad rifles out there.

Edited to add:  and people DO like to talk...

raf, you are blaming Oly for a bad decision by our government.  Try to be a little more rational and thoughtful once in a while.  You should not blame a company trying to honestly market products that people want when it is absolutely, crystal clear that the importation restrictions on ammunition are what are ridiculous and arbitrary.

I have to agree with OLY-M4Gery on that subject.
Oly has always tried to push the envelope of development so we can enjoy our gadgets and firearms. They came up with a "faux hider" early in the game, but they couldn't get it produced because it was just bad timing[early klinton years]. Therefore BATF said "no" when they submitted it for approval.  Now fake flash hiders are everywhere. So far there's a pretty good list of original products/accessories they have put out. Oly is kinda quirky, but its a company with an independent attitude and a pioneering spirit.

I am sometimes a hypocrite, though I try not to be. I'm getting better....HONEST! [BD]  Still, if that is Oly's only offense then I'll gladly forgive them in light of colt and S&W's dastardly deeds. Especially when those company's have been in the game way longer that Oly.

[b]Disclaimer: Dont take this statement wrong, I'm all for freedom of choice especially when it comes to firearms.[/b] Yet It doesn't break my heart to see one less thing in America stamped with "made in china."

Mine is perfect except for one small problem: the bolt won't close over an inserted magazine!  I've tried literally hundreds of magazines (imagine sitting in the floor of a gun shop going through boxes of mags), and the bolt hits the top of all of them except for one I found that has a floorplate with the name Kay on it.  It won't feed with other magazines I tried with the same floorplate so that one must just be a fluke.  Tom at Oly still claims it's a problem with the trigger guard!  He even flamed me here on this forum for posting about this problem.  How can the trigger guard cause a magazine to sit too high?

I wish I could find a fix, because it is very annoying to have to insert each round by hand into the chamber when shooting.  I could have bought a much cheaper single-shot NEF for the same amount of fun.

Also, I've seen some people complain about the very rough finish an their receivers.  I actually like that.  Why would someone want a weapon that's slick and harder to hold-on to (like a Colt or Bushmaster)?z

I've built up two Oly Rifles. One pre ban and the other post. Have had no problems at all with either.

Aviator

zoom, send it back to OLY and they will fix the problem.
Unless you burned a bridge or two.
Even then they will fix it.
 
"Mine is perfect except for one small problem: the bolt won't close over an inserted magazine!"

Regarding the Chinese ammo...... I believe the US govt. had evidence that Chinese arms sold in the US were financing the PLA and Chinese spying in the US.

The govt. wanted to end that. I believe the bans keeping foriegn assualt weapon importation was primarily to shut down Chinese weapons sales in the US.

Unfortunately if we just stopped the Chinese from selling the weapons that would be discrimination............ So ALL AW imports were banned.

Then they found out the Chinese were making signifigant cash selling ammo for the AW's instead. Only the Chinese ammo was DIFFERENT than most other imported ammo. So the US govt. realizing that the Chinese 7.62 had AP qualities, and knowing that AP for handguns was banned........... Wait OLY-ARMS, a NATIONALY KNOWN arms maker has PROTOTYPE 7.62 pistols......

I don't believe in most "conspiracy theories" I hear about. But this one would seem plausible, to me anyway.

EDITED TO REMOVE A TYPO THAT RESULTED IN SWEARING...

ADD:

I was in the military from 11/83-11/86, which was the time of the M16A1, although there was a least one M16 in the arms room at basic training.

Most of the weapons I handled in the military, M-60, M16A1, or 1911A1, were beat from years of use. I have yet to handle a privately owned weapon that was close to the shape that the military weapons were in.

I think people get much more pick about QC, fit, function issues when it's their money.

OLY QC aside, the do/did some stuff like the .223 chambers instead of 5.56 chambers because OLY was more concerned about accuracy, while consumers, and other maker wanted function. They now do 5.56 chamber in all weapons except for SUM barreled guns.

Hopefully they will listen to customer needs more closely in the future.

(Bushmaster still has the best AR makers website, very easy to order from. DPMS's is a mess, RRA's was quirky, OLY's and Armalite's were nice to browse but less buyer friendly, IMHO)

Zoom, this will be cheap to fix...

It sounds like the mag catch is, for some reason, holding the mag too high in the magwell.

Remove the mag catch, and grind a little off the top edge.  Replace it and try the mags now.  Repeat, taking off just a hair each time.

At the worst, you ruin a relatively cheap part.

No rumors here.  I've had problems with them and I won't buy another.  Both quality of product and customer service issues.  Their quality seems to be continually going up over time, but I have no reason to try another and all the reason in the world not to.  I will NEVER BUY ANOTHER OLY PRODUCT AS LONG AS I LIVE!!!

That being said, Bushmaster used to put out some crap as well a while back and it's hard to find anyone that faluts their quality now.

I hope that OLY does produce quality fireamrs and happy customers.  I think that their ARs are probably of decent quality now from what I've seen.  I still won't buy from them...ever.

Ross

A_Free_Man, I already tried that.  When you shave the mag catch down, there's nothing holding the magazine from moving back upwards and into the path of the bolt.  Think about it.  The mag catch both holds the magazine from falling out of the magwell and from moving too far into the magwell.  When I tried shooting it, it jammed after every round.  I've since cut-off the feedlips on one of the useless Bushmaster 10 round mags, and glued a single-shot follower in place.  I think that will work as a more easy to use single shot (versus what I had been doing, pushing the round into the chamber by hand).  Due to lack of a car and no where close to shoot where I can shoot a "black rifle," I haven't been able to test it in about 14 months, but I think that will work.  About a year ago, I stripped the lower down, and took it to a gun show with my micrometer.  I compared it to a stripped RRA and a Bushmaster receiver.  The cut-out for the mag catch is just too low.  Also, I tried the lower with a Colt upper.  I had the same problem.  I know the problem is with the lower.  I only paid $72 for it shipped directly from Oly, so it looks like it wouldn't cost them that much to replace it.z

Raf, A_FREE_MAN addressed this with you and I feel the need to also, quit being a company boy, suck up and bashing on OLY, at least till you have a better reason that what AR15.com rulers give you. That was  a really dumb thing to say. In my opinion.

OK, Zoom, if you KNOW the mag catch hole is too low, send the lower back to OLY, tell them what the problem is, and I am sure they will correct it for you.  That simple.

First, make sure of your measurement on the lower.  There is a place that has AR lower drawings:

http://www.biggerhammer.net/ar15/cad/

Check your measurements against these drawings.  Then you will know you are justified in sending the lower back and asking for them to replace it.

Ok, GB.

And ok BK1.

Simply because too many of us enjoy pissing on each other as our gun rights slip away. Sad, isn't it? What really gets me are the ones that piss, moan, and groan shortly before complaining of infringement to the 2nd amendment.

Edit for spelling only and yes I believe what I wrote.