This is NOT a flame of anyone really but I don't get why some people think ARs jam!

Today I got to see my very first AR jam.
The guy was really pissed to,I went over to see what the deal was and if I could help out and the guy have failure to eject.
He cleared the gun and it did it again,I have heard about AR jammming but have never seen anybody do it (my Bushmaster run like a bat out of hell)

I look in the guys gun and there is NO! Oil or CLP or anything!
He said "you can't put to much of anything in an AR or it will stop the thing up"..........
He had some Golck greace on the carier rails but that was it.

Then the guy tells me a story about his buddy that was in Nam. and how he had to get an AK of a dead commie,I don't know about that one[:\]

Like I said this is the one and only time I have ever seen an AR jam and it was this guys fault,if the gun really such a POS he would have not shot off the 4 empty mags he had in his range bag with nothing in it.

The only thing I can think of is the people that have there ARs jam must be doing something incorrectly.

Is this a safe assumption?

Probably... most of the time...

However, anyone who has shot a lot of different rifles... at different stages, has probably had some problems.

My Bushmaster, I bought new, and built it myself.  It has never hiccupped.

My Rock River, new, built myself... has only hiccupped on some Black Hills 68gr. stuff, and probably because of a mag.  It failed to feed, and rammed the bullet into the casing on a few.  

My Oly, has jammed on numerous occasions... but I have shot it a lot more than the others.  Originally, it had a bad ejector when I bought it (used) and had numerous fail to extracts.  I replaced the extractor, and it worked like a charm.  Still, every once in a while with a hot chamber... it would allow a fired cartridge to stick in the chamber, and rip the edge off the casing.  I attribute this to Oly's tight chambers, when firing milsurp ammo.

So... yes, jams happen, even to good people.  The key is to understand why, and repair or accept.

If you fail to follow the military's guide for lubrication... then whatever happens you deserve.  :-)

Perhaps your friend was watching the Armalite video from 1957 where they fire the AR-10 with no lube...

[url]http://www.armalite.com/[/url]

Featuring Gene Stoner himself!

Tell him he should freeze his rifle next,and then bury it in sand like the video![:D]

"Tell him he should freeze his rifle next,and then bury it in sand like the video!"



Yeah right........he would.


PS: LOL Gen did design one hell of a gun but in that video he makes me think of Ron Popil.

I've seen AR's stop several times, most of the time it is ammo or magazine related.

Well, dumb people usually have problems with complex mechanical things. An AR-15 should be no different.

What's really dumb is noting the various forms of stoppages as "Jamming" or "Jams". I'm not being picky, really, it's just that that's what you hear in the movies and also from uninformed tyros.

Failures to feed, failures to eject, failures to fire are much more imformative to those who may be called to diagnose the problem. Jamming kind of sounds like a failure to feed, or rather, double feeding but is so vague it is useless as a description.

Proper lubrication, good magazines, and proper headspacing along with a quality bolt and related bolt assembly parts will just about solve all failure to fire problems, and again, the term "failure to fire" would ultimately have to be considered the generic term for all misfunctions.

Maybe its only dumb people who can make there AR's jam, but for military weapons of the which the AR familly has to compete with in time of war, it is necessary for the weapon to be idiot proof, which if you dint know, is possible for a rifle. The AR isnt perfect, it hasnt been updated in many years. Thats why I went for a ZM, solves all the problems with the AR while keeping the only thing on the rifle that meets the requirements of a weapon in the 21st century, the lower receiver.

[left]anything mechanical will fail at sometime or another even AK's will jam! sounds like to me that he needs to lube the shit out of it. I took 0000 steel wool and with CLP rubbed around the face of the bolt and the body of the bolt to slick things up, and I lubed the hell out of it.[/left]

My bushy has only jammed once.
It was with that horrible 10 rounder that I later threw away.
No other james, not even with Wolf ammo.
Besides, my AR wouldn't jam on me now. We have too close of a bond.

Are 5 round mags also the wave of the future? [>:/]

My Mauser 98 has jammed. My 10-22 has jammed. All the rifles I've ever owned have jammed.My AR has jammed, I solved the problem. Dirt.Its not really a problem in my mind that a rifle jams, its guys that don't know how to repair their own rifle that bugs the brown tirds out of me. Watch "Full Metal Jacket" again. The point at which Pyle finally becomes something was when he understood his rifle.There is a reason the Corps teaches basic understanding of your rifle and feild stripping in 4 minutes.Your life may depend on getting your rifle functioning again.

2 jams in 1.5 years.  Both with the same USA Mag.  The second time the mag was stripped of cartridges and the steel POS went into my pond.

Yes, I should have listened to the sage advice about not using USA mags.

Well, it sounds like you guys have had different experiences than my friends and I.  AR's are very ergonically correct, and the ability to swap uppers is great.  No one I know has had one that they are completely satisfied with the reliability of.  These aren't no name junkers either.  Most of us own bushmasters.  I love my AR, but if SHTF, I'd reach for my AK-74 clone.  Cheap, ugly and utterly reliable when dirty, clean, lubed or dry.

I have had some jams, but most of my problems are double feeds, and it is always the mag.

I think the wimpy mags are one of the worst parts of the AR system.

But on to my rant, I wish American rifle companies would ship guns lubed. I bought one $1200 rifle and one $600 rifle and neither was lubed.

the only times ive had an ar jam on me was when the ammo was out of spec

mostly the cases were to long

I've experienced sever "jams" with my Bushmaster, but all were failures to feed due to magazines.  Green followers solved the problem in my 30rnd mags.  I'll get some new springs for my 20s and see if the problem goes away there.

Fortunately, I'm not dumb.  I didn't "think" it jammed, I know it did.  ;-)

Because it DOES happen. I was helping out on an M16 qual range this weekend, and one soldier in particular was having a heck of a time with his M203-equipped M16 jamming, misfeeding, double and triple feeding..... We broke it down and cleaned it, and switching to green follower magazines helped some. I'm not a military armorer so was unable to break it down further than user level stuff, and  there no clearly visible causes  for the problem. The guy has had the weapon for about 6 months, and has lost  confidence in it as a result of the problems he is having.
I spent about an hour  with him going over some PMI problems he was having, but the mechanical problems harried him through several aborted qualification attempts.
Sending the weapon to the armorer wont do any good. Unit level armorers are really nothing more than "accountability" paper pushing sorts, with no real "armorer" skills..I've only had one armorer who was any good, and that was only because he  had previously worked at a higher level depot repair position. Sending the weapon up the repair chain probably wont happen any time soon due to the current National Guard deployment situation. However, I've advised him to at least notfy the armorer and let HIM deal with the problem.

I"m with you man.
ZM is good and all but they have there own problems.
I had a ZM upper not whole gun but I did not like it.
One time I had the bolt just stop after ejecting a round 1/2 way in to a mag.
The bad thing about it was that it does not eject as well as a real AR.

I don't think I'll spend that much money for one again.

I havent Had any problem with my ZM since I took it out of the box, even with mags that where not blocked [:O]

Also Its not much of a price problem here in Canada, seing how I was able to slap mine on a 200$ post-ban lower [:O]

At Knob Creek I saw two guys with AR's and Beta's and the things jammed up all the time.    

I had jams on my ARs.  I list them by highest occurances I experinced:
1) Ammo
2) Mags
3) Defective part

You will always get jams on any gun, thing is you can't always blame the person's intellect, sometimes there are other factors.

"Also Its not much of a price problem here in Canada, seing how I was able to slap mine on a 200$ post-ban lower"

I have a post-ban lower I got two days ago to set up a buddies gun and it was only $129.00
Don't let the commies up there lie to ya,thats don't such a good deal.


PS: The lil. $ thing gos on the other side don'ch know[:)]

Its $200 Canadian Pesos! Don't forget that.

I have only had a couple problems:
1) When I built my first AR I had to get bolt & bolt carrier separate, and did not stake the carrier key on.  It got loose and caused problems.

2) Had a bad magazine that was gummed up inside and didn't feed fast enough.

Both problems were remedied.

Mines jammed a few times.  Several months back I had a blown primer with some Q3131 and it blew brass particles into the ejector.  Really pissed me off as it would work great for awhile, and then the ejector would stick in the "down" position just long enough for me to pull out the carrier to inspect it and it would look good.  Finally I found a roll pin punch, took it apart and found the little piece of grrrrr brass that was the cause of my headache.  Cleaned, reassembled, lubed and presto.... 300 more rounds today and no headache.