Picked up a NIB Colt LE6920 from a LGS yesterday. I was the first one to touch it out of the factory box and the counter guy even had me cut the “Tamper” tape on the box…
Overall, everything checked out good upon inspection. Nice carbine. One observation was the castle nut is not like any other I have seen? No notches on the exterior edge. Only two holes 180 degrees opposite each other. I really don’t care as it’s properly staked and I don’t intend on removing it but any insight from experts like IG or markm? I’m just curious. Search came up with nothing.
Thanks. I had no idea there was a new style and old style…
Interesting. The “born on date” from the Colt factory says the gun was built in September 2014. Wonder why Colt is using an old style nut on a current production gun? This is a MagPul version. Wonder if that matters?
Pretty common for Colt to use parts on hand to build rifles. This is why there are transferable M16s with a1 spec receivers that are marked M16A2 with all proper M16A2 roll marks, upper, fire control group, etc. They likely found a bunch of old style castle nuts and used them to assemble rifles.
Interesting because I have an old Colt locking nut and it didn’t have the provisions for staking nuts. I also find it hard to believe that these were just laying around somewhere.
Good eye. It is a detachable Colt carry handle I put on there. It is a take off from my “Restricted Gov and Mil” Colt LE6920 I bought several years ago that has an optic on it. I am going to leave this new LE6920 as a bare bones iron sight carbine…
BUSHMASTER? BUSHMASTER YOU SAY??? Say it isn’t so… So Colt is near bankruptcy and they are now borrowing parts from Bushmaster??? For sale, a new “factory Colt” LE6920 built with quality BM parts…
I’m not saying that at all. Just thought it was intersting that was the part number for that style with the staking notches THAT I COULD FIND. There could be many part numbers for that style of nut by different companies.
I understand that. I was being sarcastic and this was my attempt at humor over the non-issue. It is interesting to learn that this seems to be somewhat of an anomaly.
Thats what I thought, just wanted to be 100% clear. It’s crazy how quickly these threads turn into “OMG COLT SUCKS, TRASH COMPONENTS BLAH BLAH BLAH SHOW ME THE TDP BLAH BLAH” next thing you know they’ll be drilling the SMEs for how they KNOW for SURE that colt doesn’t do this or that.
I’d be half tempted to swap the nut out when I got around to it since a lot of the Armorer’s wrenches don’t have that funky end on them, and I greatly prefer the Hammerhead tool for all the RE end plate nuts.
Not a critical issue, but with my luck… I’d end up wanting to remove the RE for some reason and be stuck without the right tool for the job.
Oh ok, thought it might be another indicator of hitting the last of the NOS parts if they were sticking carry handles on since it seems to have been MBUS & occasionally Matechs/Blackhawks on everything for a couple of years now.
It is sometimes possible to remove them with a wrap of sandpaper and a variation of Channellock Tongue and Groove type pliers without much if any damage to the nut if a proper spanner wrench is not available, although the one I did it on was not staked.
Obviously, more destructive methods(pipe or cut off wheel slice to top of RE threads) would remove it as well.
I am an inquisitive type of fellow and I like answers whether they really matter or not. I think this might be the winner. I looked at the Colt Canada website and the various products available and, near as I can tell from the pics, mine is consistent with the castle nuts used in Colt Canada products. Based on what I could see in the available pics, only the LE901 has the “new style” nut. The rest appear like mine.
Still don’t understand why Colt would do this other than maybe a shortage of parts when my particular carbine was built. No big deal. I will replace it with the new style if ever necessary to remove the current nut. It’s nicely staked.
That is very interesting. I can’t say I’ve ever seen any factory Colt carbine that did not have the receiver endplate staked into the castle nut. My older Colt castle nuts all have the “notches” for staking. To my knowledge, all factory Colt carbines which use the CAR/M4 stock, including the early ones, are staked at the factory. Early carbines also had a dab of black paint over the staking.
I have two KAC QD sling mount receiver endplates and both shipped with a castle nut that looks like the early Colt type, but lack provision for staking.
