I picked up two suppressors today, my M4-2000 and my Pilot 2. I was not expecting a Pilot 2 at all, M3 told me he was selling me an original pilot. Not sure what that shows on his part but I am beyond elated to get the upgraded model that allows disassembly.
I was really looking forward to shooting my dedicated suppressed SBR. I have written about it on here countless times, its a build that has taken since August to complete.
It has a Noveske upper receiver with a DD barrel cut to 10.3". The gas port is 0.058" (I measured it) When I first fired this, it would not cycle unsuppressed regardless of ammo or buffer weight. It just barely ejected the spent case but would not pick up a new one. The rail is a Centurion 9" and currently has an H Buffer with USGI spring.
I checked all three rifles first for concentricity, I just eyeballed it. I trust BCM/ADCO enough that I wasn’t very concered with any baffle strikes, but I wanted to at least make sure there wasn’t something that was glaringly wrong. I started off with the dedicated suppressed upper.
I had M193, PMC Bronze .223, and PMC XTAC M855 with me. All cycled flawlessly suppressed. M193 would cycle unsuppressed, but barely. Not sure if the rifle is “breaking in” or something, but that was a surprise.
Recoil was non existent. It was very very smooth, there was no gas blowback, and the upper was pretty clean considering the suppressed firing.
When I picked up the 12.5", I thought that it was perfect. Its barrel was just long enough to justify the ACOG’s magnification but even with the suppressor on it it was not unwieldy or front heavy. I was surprised. It felt very very balanced. This is probably my new favorite rifle.
However, it is definitely not comfortable to fire suppressed. With the short eye relief, the increased felt recoil and the “gas face” it was not as fun as the 10.3" (It should be noted that I was not using eye-pro specifically to see if gas would get in my eyes [stupid, I know]. WIth a good set of eye pro there would probably be no issues)
No surprise here, this was the most awkward to fire with the suppressor with 14.5" of barrel. It was still not uncomfortable but hanging 16oz off the muzzle of an already longer weapon made it a bit front heavy.
This too suffered from the same problems the 12.5" AR did. I would not like to fire these weapons suppressed for very long.
I will need to put a Vltor A5 buffer assembly on the 14.5" lower and the 12.5" lower if I plan on shooting suppressed at all. Every shot feels like the buffer is bottoming out on the buffer tube and causing it to beat itself to death. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was only using an H buffer.
I’m extremely satisfied with building an upper from the ground up to be shot suppressed. It is a completely different rifle than the other two with the suppressor attached. I’d bet that it feels smoother than most unsuppressed ARs.
I am really going to run it through its paces on Thursday; I’ll be firing about 500 rounds through it and I can’t wait to see if it can maintain this standard of reliability. Of course, that is more important than felt recoil or gas blowback.