Little things to increase an ARs' reliability

[Shin-Tao]

Often tips are given on how to improve a weapons' reliabilty.

I haven't seen any tips for the AR.

I was thinking something could be done to the lugs...

Anybody have any ideas?

No debate on AR reliabilty desired. I'm just curious about possible improvements a smith could do.

Thank you.

[Hard Ball]

Be sure that you have good magazines that work well in YOUR gun. Be sure it is properly lubed with high quality lubricants. Load your magazines with one or two less rounds than maximum capacity, (e.g. 28 0r 29 rounds in a 30 round magazine) Carry your magazines in good quality magazine pouches to provide some degree of protectiom. Use high quality ammunition for serious purposes. If you might carry your rifle in the field for some time get yourself a buttstock cleaning kit or a kit that fits in a pouch on your belt. Collectively doing these things should significantly improve your AR's reliability.

[Chris Orndorff]

I polished the bearing surfaces and the underside of the bolt carrier.

[WalterGAII]

Just slop a little Mobil 1 around and your AR will be totally reliable, assuming that it's a Bushy. I've fired thousands of rounds of my reloads through my Shorty, with no malfunctions.

One small thing that you can do is use a McFarland gas ring.

[Shin-Tao]

Mobil 1?

Polished bearing surfaces- That sounds logical.

Any of you heard anything about work being done on the lugs?

[AR-10]

I had a really good article on this saved to favorites. Unfortunately,when I went to access it ,it is no longer available.

The guy who wrote it said to polish the bearing surfaces on the bolt ONLY. Do not polish the bearing surfaces in the upper. You can also polish the bolt where it drags across the hammer. I don't think I'd touch the locking lugs. If you feel brave, you can disassemble the trigger group and polish the pins that hold the parts together. That is supposed to give you a smoother trigger. Bigger Hammer may have an online manual showing how to get the trigger group out and back in.

[BigG]

1. Buy a preban Colt.

2. Buy only GI or Colt 20 or 30 round magazines.

[WalterGAII]

I usually polish everything in sight, but I don't believe that polishing the pins will affect trigger pull. As far as being "brave" enough to take out the trigger assembly. There's nothing to it. Even a DemocRAT could be trained to do it, given no time constraints. You know, kind of like a Glock.

[Shin-Tao]

"No debate on AR reliability desired."

But thank you for telling me I have a charging handle.

[LIProgun]

Such a zero (sometimes done as one-inch high at 50 yards) provides a suitable battle-sight zero. At 42 (or 50) yards, the bullet is still rising. Check out the range where the bullet crosses back to the line of sight (zero) before you condemn it.

[Badger Arms]

Shin, any debate about the AR cannot be complete without complaints about the basic design. It's prone to jamming. Some things that can be done are to ensure you are using correct ammunition and clean powder. As I recall, it was the powder formulation that caused the bad reputation in the first place. Secondly, you are talking about increasing reliability without touching on the design. You propose to put a band-aid on the problem.

It was said of the First World War that the US had the best target rifle, the Germans the best Hunting rifle, and the British the best Battle Rifle. Modern warfare has different requirements. I'd say that the M-16 today in all its incarnations is a good 'fair-weather' weapon. For civilians who are unlikely to require sustained operation in field conditions, it is quite a good weapon. For the Military today, it might be sufficient. Heck, I'd carry the M-4 on field exercises in Arkansas any day of the week. I even own a 16" M-4 style gun. Problem is, when the S#%t hits the fan, American soldiers will be dying because of a complacensy and failure to act.

{dismount soapbox} Anyhow, your best band-aids are to be found in good ammo, properly cleaned and lubed bolt carrier and internals, and keeping the Gawddarned ejection-port covered when you aren't in a fire-fight. Stick with good-condition magazines that you've tried in your weapon and found to work. DON'T polish aluminum surfaces or your pins but everything else can be polished.

[johnwill]

LIProgun,

The bullet from any gun never "rises" after leaving the barrel. The sighting plane may cause the bullet to travel in an arc above the point of aim, but I can assure you gravity is at work the moment it leaves the barrel!

[Badger Arms]

If I fire a gun straight up, does the bullet fall or does it just slow and then eventually arc and fall? For a battlefield zero using Maximum Point Blank Range theory, 42 yards is about right for an M-16.

[4V50 Gary]

Not a little thing, but of substantial importance is to free float that barrel. DPMS makes a CMP legal handguard which allows the barrel to be freefloated. The other major thing is a little old fashion trigger work.

[Shin-Tao]

All your base are belong to us!

[Badger Arms]

????

[Ivanhoe]

Don't screw with the lugs on the barrel extension or bolt. That's Darwin Award stuff.

Don't screw with the pins, other than checking that they are cut properly and are "detenting" the springs correctly.

Dittos on magazine issues. If you want to be thorough, number your mags and keep a notebook on how many rounds thru each. That way, if you encounter a problem, you can sort out whether its specific to certain mags or endemic to the gun. You can try the Wolff mag springs and the "green followers" (particularly if you have some used or otherwise questionable mags), but they're not needed most of the time (don't fix what ain't broke).

Here are some things that a good AR smith might do;

1) polish and/or open up the feed ramps

2) help the extractor out with a heavier spring, double spring, or one of those elastomeric inserts

3) using a very fine slipstone, very gently break the corners and edges of the extractor hook, so that the extractor doesn't shave brass (which can migrate into the bolt's innards)

4) inspect the chamber thoroughly to make sure it doesn't have any ridges or crud that will hinder extraction (early M16s didn't have the chromed chamber which contributed extraction difficulties to a gun with an already clogged gas tube)

5) trigger work won't make the gun more reliable, but it'll help you put rounds on target (which is the whole point anyway). The drop-in trigger sets can be fairly good, but a smith can do wonders with stock parts, possibly even for less money than the big-name drop-in sets.

Inspect your ammo. There's a lot of crap out there (though I haven't heard many stories of bad 5.56, compared to 7.62x39 and 7.62x51).

Remember the Hippocratic Oath; "First, do no harm." Make sure that you don't make things worse in your zeal to make things better.

[dZ]

good thing i saved this on TFL cause the original page is gone:

http://www.avalon.net/~middlecoast/riflesmo.htm
The AR-15 Rifle

Let's get one thing straight from the get-go. I love this rifle. I love everything about this rifle. I am so sick of people badmouthing this
fine weapon that I won't even respond to the cliche'd sanctimonious
criticisms we all hear.

For the hunting I do in rural Iowa, it is the perfect rifle. If I were fighting commies on some long-range European battle field I would
rather have an M-14. But the only long range commies I shoot at are
ground dwelling varmints commonly referred to as prairie dogs and my AR is just the ticket for them. If I could only have one
self-loading rifle--not merely a theoretical exercise given the current
administration--and felt certain I would never leave rural Iowa, I'd take my AR. Now, if I had reason to believe I might find myself in
Alaska, I might opt for an M-14 (M-1A).

Right out of the box this rifle is fine. Old boys around my neck of the woods have been sawing off carrying handles, free floating the
barrels and low-mounting scopes on their ARs for years. These guys
use their ARs exclusively for coyote/fox hunting and this configuration makes a lot of sense for predator hunting. But I personally like
the carrying handle and I can't say I've ever missed a shot because my
scope was mounted high.

Also, I've never seen a properly maintained AR that wasn't anything but absolutely reliable. So please take the smoothing I'm going to
describe for what it is--tweaking. I have some friends who I consider
extremist audiophiles. These fellas spend $200 on speaker wire. They say if you turn the cable around and swap ends from the amps
to the speakers it makes a sonic difference. That, my friends, is
tweaking. I'm sure they feel the same way about the procedures I'm going to describe.

Polishing the internals. I've never seen obnoxious tool marks on the feed ramps of an AR. But polishing without abrasives can't hurt.
That's a good place to start.Ensure your weapon is unloaded and field
strip it. Wipe the chamber and all parts in the bolt carrier assembly free of oil. Leaving the upper and lower receivers separated
observe the feed ramps on at the base of the chamber. Put a pointed felt tip on
the proper Dremel mandrel and sparingly apply Simichrome on the feed ramps. There is no reason to use sandpaper on the feed
ramps so don't do it. We want to tweak, not alter.

Polish the feed ramps with the Simichrome and move on to jeweler's rouge. Don't spend a lot of time here, just polish to you can see
the ramps start to glaze. This reduces friction for those incoming bullet
noses.

Next, examine the rails on the bolt carrier. You should see areas on the rails at the base and to the side of the bolt carrier key that
appear worn and or shiny. These are friction areas. Smoothing here will
make everything work a little easier but again we just want to tweak. With the 600 grit paper go to work on any gouges and dings in
these worn areas. Don't spend a lot of time with the sandpaper because
you don't want to remove much metal. Go on to the Simichrome and rouge and get those edges to shine. Your bolt carrier should
move in and out of the receiver as if suspended on silicon bearings.

Turn over the bolt carrier and examine the bottom of the carrier. This is a high friction area as it contacts the top of the hammer during
cycling. Go to work with the sandpaper and lessen any marks, dings or
gouges. Graduate to the Simichrome and rouge and smooth the whole surface until it shines. Don't worry about a few marks. Just
better the worst of them.

Take a look at the bolt cam pin. This pin is also a high friction area. You'll notice several distinct wear patterns on this little pin. Start
with the Simichrome polish and go on to the rouge. The wear marks
should sparkle.Polish the back of the bolt behind the gas rings with Simichrome and rouge. This part moves in and out of the rear of
the bolt carrier during cycling and polishing in this area reduces friction.

The top of the hammer face, the surface that actually strikes the firing pin, is in contact with the bottom of the bolt carrier during
cycling. Lightly sand here with the 600 grit sandpaper, paying particular
attention to any tool marks at the rear of the hammer face, and continue polishing with Simichrome and jeweler's rouge.

Improving the trigger pull

As I mentioned earlier, military-style rifles are not known for their trigger pulls. Usually they are gritty and can benefit by taking the
roughness out of the hammer/trigger contact area. Please don't even think
about using sandpaper here. You can ruin your rifle if you use abrasives on the hammer/trigger contact area. Just polish this area with
Simichrome and rouge.

With your thumb on the top of the hammer, pull the trigger and ease the hammer to rest against the back of the magazine well. Look
down into the lower receiver and observe how the hammer assembly
goes together. Notice that the two arms of the hammer spring ride atop the trigger pivot pin. With your thumb on the hammer push
the hammer pivot pin out to one side with a small nail or similar tool and
remove the hammer. Pay attention to how the hammer pivot pin comes out and put it back in the same way.

Wipe the hammer/trigger contact area on the hammer free of oil. Polish the contact area with Simichrome and then rouge. Spend
some time here and get the contact edge/corner as polished as possible.
Don't bury the Dremel felt tip into the metal, keep the R.P.M.s up by letting the Dremel do the work. This area should be glass
smooth. Then smooth the trigger/hammer contact edge on the trigger
assembly. You should be able to polish this edge with the trigger still in place. Wipe these area free of polish and oil liberally.
Reassemble in reverse order of disassembly. Do not use force to seat the pivot
pin. You should be able to do this with finger pressure if everything is aligned properly. Check operation to ensure everything is
reassembled properly but do not let the hammer smack into the back of the
magazine well.

Miscellaneous tweakage. There is no shortage of other improvements AR owners can make at minimal cost. For about $20 I installed a
Trijicon tritium night sight front post. Granted this is beneficial only
at close range during low light conditions but I have occasionally stumbled across Mr. Coyote in that scenario.

If you generally rely on your iron sights, try to file the front post for more precise shooting. With the fine side of the file, take an equal
number of strokes to both the right and left sides of the front post. By
removing a small amount of metal you can get a more precise sight picture. Touch up the exposed metal with a swipe or two from the
touch-up black pen.

If you really want to squeeze precision from your AR consider installation of an aluminum forend that allows your barrel to free float.
This reduces torsional effects presented when using a taunt sling and
when resting the forend on sandbags or a bipod. Eagle Arms, Box 457, Coal Valley, IL (309) 799-5619 offers everything from knurled
aluminum forends to match sights and trigger assemblies to complete
rifles. If you really want to go all out, let technician Randy Farrell at Eagle Arms install a match barrel or 4.5 pound, clean-break-trigger
group and transform your run-of-the-mill AR into a tack hammer.

[AR-10]

dZ

You da MAN! That is the link I tried to access. It's not available from my bookmarks anymore. I can re-save it from here,now. Thank you very much!

[Badger Arms]

The AR-10 of Stoner's design that came about over 40 years ago IS STILL THE SAME GUN as the M-16 of today. The exhaust pipe that pushes the bolt carier back away from the bolt still operates in EXACTLY the same manner and the parts interchange.

Granted, 'improvements' have been made in barrel diameter, twist rate, chrome plating on the barrel, sights, pistol grip shape, stock length, flash supressor shape, magazine follower composition, magazine and rifle finish, and a brass deflector. With all of these changes, the basic system remains EXACTLY the same. In fact, they've watered the gun down and put a 'mechanical drill sergeant' in the trigger that lessens the reliability of the gun making it a 0-to-3 round burst selector.

In the end, you still have the exhaust pipe of the gun dumping its crap into the bolt of the gun to operate the weapon. Any nitwit can tell you that's a BAD idea. The thing that keeps the Army from adopting a fix is the 'it works good enough' philosophy. I feel bad that my Air Force had to jam that gun down the throat of real soldiers.

[LIProgun]

johnwill, while you are correct that gravity is always pulling down on the bullet, you could not be more incorrect in saying it never rises after leaving the barrel, at least with reference to the horizontal plane. To prove the point with an extreme example, aim the gun at a 45 degree angle from the horizontal. Obviously the bullet "rises" from the horizontal plane.

You are likely thinking of a bullet fired with the barrel parallel to the ground, or angled downward. In those cases, the bullet will indeed start moving downward upon leaving the barrel.

But remember that the sights are above the bore, so the bullet necessarily starts below the line of sight. If we didn't shoot upward from the bore line, we'd never hit what we were aiming at, since the line of sight is always above the bore line. The sights are set so when the bullet is fired, it _rises_ above the line of sight, starts falling after achieving maximum trajectory, and returns to the line of sight at some point further.

If we take a rifle sighted for, say, 300 yards, the bullet indeed rises to intersect the line of sight some distance away from the muzzle (roughly 50 yards), and arcs to cross back down to the point of impact (300 yards).

[Keith J]

All gas-operated arms have to do it so why not minimize the weight of the operating parts? For one thing, the op-rod will never bend on the AR. Sure the gas tube can bend but its well-protected under the hand guards.

All of the improvements have made the 0-300 meter rifle good out to 550 meters on point targets and up to 800 on area targets. Sure the burst feature limits its use as a area target weapon but it can and will reach to this distance.

FWIW, the forward assist is a tactical issue and the AF declined its use for SP/MP use. Army and USMC need it for silent (nearly) charging.

Reliability tips? Quality rifle and quality ammo.
Clean every 400 rounds (yes, I've gone to 600 w/o malfunction)and keep it buttoned up when not shooting.

Improvements? How about a magwell boot to keep crud out? Ditto for the mag base. And the bolt stop opening. Reverse the spring on the dust cover so it auto closes instead of opening.


Its a great rifle.

[Badger Arms]

It's really telling how posts by the Stonerphiles out there tend to contradict themselves. I'm not sure you even realize it, but you did the same thing. For one thing, you say how the forward assist is necessary for silent closing but then ask for an improvement in keeping gunk from getting in through the mag well. Why is gunk a bad thing? This is typical M-16 thinking that has us believe EVERY gun has to be kept clean to operate. This comes from being conditioned on rifles like the M-16 without ever having experienced the beauty of a properly designed battle rifle chewing up cases of ammunition without the need for a cleaning. The AK-47 doesn't mind. My SKS doesn't mind. Mini-14 chews it up. The FAL, Galil, HK G36, G3, Garand, Carbine, Sig 551, etc, etc, ALL eat up debris without problems. The problem is that the AR-15 is NOT as battle-reliable as ANY of the guns above.

As for the OP rod, you said it was easier to bend, BUT you knocked op-rod designes because they might bend? On the AK, AR-18, and G36, the Operating Rod is always protected and I don't hear about problems with them!

As for the gas venting into the bolt, THE M-16 IS THE ONLY RIFLE OF THE ABOVE MENTIONED THAT VENTS OPERATING GAS INTO THE BOLT. Keith, do you understand what we mean when we say that? Not sure how you can stand by your assertion that all rifles do this. The operating gas for any of the piston guns mentioned dumps into the gas port/piston area which is (more or less) self-cleaning. The HK G3 doesn't do this, but still gets dirty.

[Scott Conklin]

Regarding AR reliability. I've fired most all the above posts rifles and experienced various jams and failures. After years of shooting my ARs I've had ONE that stovepiped regularly and a pistol variant that we never did manage to make run quite right. My others have been essentially failure free. And I have NEVER been one to do a great deal of cleaning. Point being I fail to see any great difference between any of the rifles in question regarding reliability. They are ALL good stuff. It's all just a question of personal preference and bias.

And about bullet "rise". There is no such thing. Hold the barrel level and the bullet begins to drop as soon as fired. Lift the muzzle for a longer shot and you get ARC, not rise. People got this odd idea about bullet rise from illustrations attempting to demonstrate the elevated placement of the muzzle, thus the "lift" shown in these illustrations. American Rifleman had a write up on this recently, I think in the January edition.

[Keith J]

Or more importantly, why is the M16 design bad? The gas is vented in between the back of the bolt and the forward portion of the carrier. Nothing complex there to foul up. Matter of fact, the gas desposits build up only to a certain level and then stay constant. Cleaning here only causes wear. Dirt actually HELPS as it reduces the metal to metal contact at the rear of the bolt. This is a gas-sealing area which likes to run dirty.

As far as cleaning, it was NOT the M16 which duped the services into overcleaning. Matter of fact, once the "teething problem" due to inferior Ball (tm) powder was resolved, less cleaning was required than any other service rifle. 5.56 was the first cartridge introduced into US service that was never loaded the corrosive priming. And there is the key.....Before Pb-Styphanate priming, perchlorate priming was the norm. Its use left a thin layer of potassium chloride (KClO4 decomposes to KCl + 2 02)which being a neutral salt, promoted corrosion. This salt is held in conjunction with carbon, graphite etc from firing and removal of the dirt meant the KCl was gone and the rifle would be resonably protected. Hence, the "white glove" test arose.

Op rods are well protected but can bend from a hot round or higher than normal pressures. The M16 handles hot ammo just fine and even functions on very weak ammo. No gas regulator is required.

I will admit the M16 family requires tighter tolerances on some parts but is that a bad design?