Ruminating on AR Mags With a Cup of Hot Chocolate

AR/M4 AR General Discussion
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I have GI mags with Magpull followers and the Ranger plates along with Brownell’s with the tan followers and of course, PMags. GI mags work great with brass cased ammo. Some get downright finicky with steel cases. GI mags are a little easier to find than Pmags but it’s buyer beware.

Pmag quality is more consistent. What I don’t like are the Pmag dust covers. The CDO part of me is annoyed that at the end of the day, I always have more Pmags than dust covers.

I find that while shooting, I grab the Pmags more often than I do the GI mags. They are easier to load and I worry less about damaging them. More & more, the Pmags are becoming, for me, the preferred choice.

I got to ruminating on this subject last night was cleaning a good number of my mags after enjoying most of a cup of hot chocolate. I was cleaning the mags because they got to enjoy the rest of that cup of hot chocolate when I foolishly spilled it inside my mag bag.

GI and Pmag alike got rinsed with water, given a shot of brake cleaner, disassembled, dried, wiped down with a light coat of oil where needed and reassembled.

Ranger plates look cool and protect the bottom of the mag when dropped or used as a monopod (an idea I’m still trying to wrap my head around, but that is a subject for another thread). But they make the mag harder to break down and reassemble. What was I thinking, I wondered, when I installed these things?

Regular GI mag floor plates are easier, but still require a bit of persuasion with a tool. Reassembly was a snap.

But field-stripping and reassembling the Pmags was astonishingly easy. Push the little black button, slide off the floor plate and viola! Brilliant!

This incident has left me wondering why I should bother with GI mags anymore- what, with changing them to Magpul followers and all- when I can just get a Pmag that’s already got the right follower, feeds reliably and is very simple to field strip. Could be I had too much time to think while cleaning the mags.

On the other hand, I’m very grateful the 60 round Surefire mag was in the other room when the hot chocolate spilled

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Ugh, that Surefire mag is a pain in the ass to put back together lol.

I see the Pmag as a very good product and I also usually grab them when going shooting compared to the USGI, however they don’t all fit in my mag carriers easily and that is a pain in the ass. I’m liking the M3 versions a lot though.

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Rare smiley, mistwolf. This should be good. I see what your saying. But it is:jester

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Is apperantly not that OCD.

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And how! I bought some Wolf earlier this summer, to be used as close-in/‘guest’ ammo. My wife and I were loading some mags (PMags, old GI, new GI w/‘teflon’ finish, all with Magpul followers) and boy did they NOT like being fed in to the newer black/teflon mags. After the first 10 rounds, it felt like you were trying to put in the 31st or 32nd round. Took them apart, inspected, brass case ammo went in fine, etc. Those mags just didn’t like the steel cases. I also learned that steel case ammo refuses to cooperate on stripper clips with a spoon, too.

The CDO part of me is annoyed that at the end of the day, I always have more Pmags than dust covers.

The way I have my belt set up, my mags go in the pouches feed lips down. So no dust covers when in the pouches. I’m half tempted to just take them off, unless they are sitting somewhere exposed for a significant amount of time. But it just seems wrong to not use the dust covers at all. I’ll have to do some orange button research on whether or not leaving the covers in a bag at home is fine.

I find that while shooting, I grab the Pmags more often than I do the GI mags. They are easier to load and I worry less about damaging them. More & more, the Pmags are becoming, for me, the preferred choice.

Same here. Although I do feel better when my GI mags have Ranger Plates on the bottoms. It doesn’t do anything to protect the feed lips, of course, so maybe it’s not really that much of a benefit.

This incident has left me wondering why I should bother with GI mags anymore- what, with changing them to Magpul followers and all- when I can just get a Pmag that’s already got the right follower, feeds reliably and is very simple to field strip.

I haven’t been buying any new GI/style mags other than a few new ones I picked up for REALLY cheap. Otherwise, it’s been nothing but PMags. Especially since the Gen3 came out, and the Gen2 can be had pretty darn cheaply now.

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CDO. It’s got to be alphabetized

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Have you ever thought of using the Magpul L-Plates instead of the Ranger Plates on your GI magazines? I install these on the Colt magazines I get from work, along with a Magpul follower. They are basically Ranger Plates without the loop, so you have easy access to the takedown tab.

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I use PMags, ARCs, and GI types. I have a few Lancers, too. I have no clear preference, and like different things about each. When it’s time to clean a mag though, and yes there is a time to do that, the PMag is the easiest bar none. They also have the most in common to pistol mags, an advantage to non-gun LCDs who benefit from keeping things simple.

This was an interesting thread last year on the topic of magazines:
“Move back to GI magazines - a journey” https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=81074

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There is a lot of good info on that thread and I followed it from the start. As a result, I bought GI and Pmags and have been using both. I am not against GI mags but while cleaning up my mess and, as I said, ruminating on the subject, I realized that I find myself digging past the GI mags for the Pmags. Last night I realized buying Pmags is much simpler than sorting through various GI mags looking for a good manufacturer and checking to see what followers they have.

I do need to get some kind of pouches to carry mags on my person. That may change my views on mags- again- but experience does that to a fella