Gotta keep them ARs clean

AR/M4 AR General Discussion
1

…or they won’t run.

I have about 5,000 rounds of 5.45 mm through a particular AR, a box stock Smith and Wesson, without any cleaning of the lower. Today I took some 450 Bushmaster handloads, to make a long story shorter I had two fizzles with the handloads and wound up with a teaspoon of unburned powder in the lower. I was going to take it to the maintenance shop and blow it out but decided what the heck, give it a try. Put the 5.45 mm upper back on and shot 300 rounds, not a bit of trouble. I did notice the bolt got harder to pull back as I shot, the unburned powder was getting bounced out of the lower into the upper and gumming things up. I gave the lower a complete strip down cleaning and it was absolutely slap full of crud in addition to the unburned powder that got spilled into it. I cleaned the 5.45 mm bolt, same thing, absolutely slap full of crud. The bolt hasn’t been cleaned in a long time, the upper I give the hot water treatment every time I shoot but the bolt I just submerge in ATF until the next shooting trip. The gun didn’t care, just kept banging away. I guess it hasn’t been told it has to be kept spotlessly clean. I had one of my little buddies with me, he was horrified how dirty the gun was but then he just graduated Marine recruit training a week ago.

Details:
WW 296 powder, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37 grains under Winchester 230 grain round nose bullets, CCI small rifle primers. Shot them out of a Bushie upper on this S&W lower. The first round hangfired. Following round jammed due to unburned powder in the chamber. Rodded out the powder, tried 34 grain load, same thing. Second round, a fizzle, powder didn’t burn, the primer just popped the bullet out of the case. Happilly the bullet was barely into the rifling, it just bumped right out with the cleaning rod, this time I get 30 or so grains of powder in the action, much of it spilling into the lower. I tried one of the 37 grain loads, another hangfire then another fizzle. Now I got probably a good 20 or 25 grains of WW 296 in the lower.

2

This post is hard for me to track but, it sounds like a reloading problem. Not a firearm problem.

3

Oddly enough the guys with the cleanest AR’s seem to have the most issues in my experiences. They take that ultra clean thing to the point of not using enough lube and essentially running them dry or adding CLP every 100rds which makes no sense to me

4

Edited, hopefully more readable. It was an ammo problem, the point is how the AR responded to the teaspoon of fined grained powder dumped inside the works.

5

I think BCM would disagree with you about keeping the AR squeaky clean.

6

Didn’t you hear, lube attracts sand and dust.

7

Had an old marine dude lambast me at the range the other day because i simply put some slip2k on my rifle everytime i shoot instead of wire brushing it into oblivion, haha
He kept talking about how us kids dont know how to care for guns anymore then he went into some bs about scrubbing the chamber and bolt every session with a brush.

sent from my overcompensation tool known as the galaxy note

8

I have a complete build with over 5,000 rounds that other than lube, has never been touched for any maintenance, and runs like a machine. That’s when I usually replace the extractor, spring, buffer, buffer spring, and gas rings.

9

Crap, I did not know I ever needed to clean the lower.

10

If I remember right I’ve got an wolfe extra power hammer spring in my lower that’s coupled with my 5.45 upper so I don’t change uppers out. Was afraid it would cause a problem. Am I wrong?

11

Speaking as “an old Marine”…
I can say without hesitatation that almost EVERYTHING we were taught back then, in the early eighties in my case, was wrong.
The absolute overcleaning & scrubbing, the MANDATORY 3 day cleaning after firing, using those horrid steel buttstock cleaning rods over and over and over, my God, how those rifles were able to hit a damn thing is simply amazing.
But, then, it was the most up-to-date, state of the art info we had.
Now you take those guys, who after the Corps, NEVER had any further training or learned anything else after they got out, cause you know, they were MARINES by God, and we know everything, and anything else besides what I just described is heresy.
THE most sorry assed, dangerous gun handling Ive ever seen was while I was in the Corps.
I wonder, do they still insist on the white glove cleanliness and 3 day cleaning regimine after firing?

12

My friend in the Army still does to this day.

13

I had forgotten, I ran maybe 10K rounds of 22 long rifle with this lower. 22 long rifle is dirty, dirty, dirty.

I did not put the extra power hammer spring in the lower. I have the occasional failure to go bang which I use as malfunction clearance practice. I also have a couple of jammamatic magazines I use for the same purpose.

I don’t know if an extra power hammer spring would cause problems with conventional center fire ammo. I would not use it with 22 long rifle.

14

You’ll be fine.

15

Pretty sure Tim was being sarcastic dude.

16

This was not only a MC problem. On one occasion, because of an anal armorer, all us flunkies took our ARs in the shower and scrubbed till every microbe was defeated. They were stored bone dry.

I think much of this came from the ‘last war’ when corrosive primers were used and a clean rifle was the definition of a ‘right soldier/Marine’. Things tend to stick around longer than they need to.

Then there were problems with the M16 and its use/misuse in the early days of VN.

17

Oh yeah…Ive showered with Ole Faithful more than once…I had forgotten about that!!
Your right m4brian…I know it was service wide. And…I too believe it was just a holdover from a bygone era from blackpowder right up to
corrosive powders/primers.
As always, the military are the LAST to change their ways, usually kicking and screaming.
As weapons/ammo/techniques/technology have evolved, so has weapons maintenance. I qarauntee a boresnake back in the 70’s & 80’s would have been laughed out og the barracks. I oft wonder, if 20-25 years from now, where we’ll be and what we will have, and if we will look back to NOW and say the same thing about us, as we do about them back then.

18

Nevermind.

19

It’s great that the weapon system can run like this, but sensable cleaning ( note I said sensable :slight_smile: is always a good idea if you have the downtime. It really doesnt take that long to once over a weapon…

20

I have a few things I would like to comment on. I know that “the one and only way” is defined, so what I say probably won’t matter, but I think people need some perspective on this “no cleaning” thing.

1. Weapons do not need to be white glove clean to function. Everybody knows this. The whole point of cleaning the gun, ie wiping down the parts, it to facilitate proper parts inspection, not making it spotless.

In addition, gunpowder residue build up will absorb moisture, and can lead to corrosion/rust. This of course depends on materials used, coatings etc.

2. Lube

“Didn’t you hear, lube attracts sand and dust.”

Well, actually it does. Not a huge problem with assault or battle rifles, seeing as they are mostly closed systems, but it is an issue with crew served weapons, where sand and dust can and will get into the feeding mechanism of the gun.

This is why we try and limit the amount of lube on the outside of the gun, whilst running it sufficiently lubed on the inside.

Dry guns will be coated with sand and dust as well, but doesn’t gum up like the areas with lube do. Still, wet sand glides better than dry sand.

The main culprit in regards to foreign debris inside the receiver, are magazines; sand, rocks and dirt gets into the pouches when people are shooting from the prone, low crawling etc, and gets into the gun via the mag. Depending on the amount and size, this can cause some serious issues.

3. “The military way is retarded, and soldiers don’t know what they are doing”

This is a common theme, and somewhat understandable. There is no doubt that the “white glove clean” approach to weapons maintenance lost it’s original intent somewhere along the way.

I am not going to claim that I know where it happened, or why, but I am pretty sure that the “clean rifle” approach was initially a result of one thing:

An easy standard to enforce across the board to ensure that everybody maintained their weapons.

It was not something that was implemented from a lack of knowledge.

In the military you have studs, duds and everything in between. To enforce a standard that states “no need to clean you guns, just put lube on it”, is difficult and problematic. How can you, as a leader, tell if a gun is in working order when doing inspections? How can you tell if the soldier has actually lubed his gun? Is it just the old lube still on there?

Somewhere along the way, the original intent was lost in translation; everyone who has been in the military and done message/comunication drills when marching single file, knows that the message delivered to the first guy is not the same message repeated by the last guy.

This phenomenon is pretty common in the military, unfortunatly, where proper knowledge of intent/cause/reason of why something is done a specific way is substituted by “hearsay knowledge”; after a while this “knowledge” becomes a de facto truth, and no one can no longer recall the original intent/cause/reason.

That is why soldiers are now judged on the cleanliness of their guns, and use retarded methods to get them spotless; their instructors was taught by their instructors, who in turn was taught by their instructors and the message was scrambled along the way.

I’ll end with this Gunfighter Moment, by Larry Vickers:

Gunfighter Moment – Larry Vickers

“Attention to detail; in the world of combat marksmanship there is absolutely no substitute for attention to detail. Simple things like proper maintanence can literally mean success or failure in a gunfight.”

-Larry Vickers
MSG, US Army (Ret)

http://soldiersystems.net/2012/09/01/gunfighter-moment-larry-vickers-3/