sono's build thread

AR/M4 Custom Build Forum
1

Hi there folks. I just wanted to use this thread to document my AR build.

Specs listed on the pic, not much else to say regarding the gun. If anyone is curious, the reason I used the DD 12.0 FSP as opposed to the standard 12 is that there’s no gas block that would fit the .936 bull barrel and allow the standard DD oval profile rail to fit. I also like the look and that’s all that matters. :smiley:

The gun is no lightweight. The combination of the bull barrel, billet upper/lower combo, optic and VFG+Weaponlight is near as anything to 10 lbs. The ACOG is great. I evaluated both the TA11, TA33 and TA648, but I chose the TA33 because it was the lightest of the bunch.

I have to say that the 3x30 optic delivers. Trijicon advertises the eye relief at 1.9" but their marketing literature doesn’t match up to their user’s manual which lists eye relief at 3.6". In reality, it goes as far as 4.5" or so, but I use it @ around 3".

2

The first time at the range with the gun was last week.

I fired 55 rounds of 55g Remington .223 through the gun. The combination of a new buffer spring on the very short ARFX-E stock, new parts, and not enough lubricant caused consistent short stroking. I went home tired and decided to come back the next week with considerably more lubricant in the gun.

I replaced the light coating of moly grease with a ridiculous amount of moly grease. I also left the bolt locked open for a few days to let the buffer spring “set”.

Second time at the range was today.

I fired 25 rounds of 55g Remington .223 and 200 rounds of 55g Federal .223 through the gun. The first 150 rounds went with no failures. The extra lubricant worked in preventing short stroking. Consistent accuracy and quite a muzzle blast from the bull barrel. Folks on either side of me thought I was firing a .308? Strange. My gun certainly did sound very different from the AR15 the guy next to me was shooting. His had a higher pitch “pow” while my gun had a “boom” sound to it.

The last 75 rounds became slightly problematic. I had two double-feeds, 2 FTE’s and several short-strokes. A helpful shooter next to me noticed that most if not all of the extra grease I added had basically been gunked up with propellant fouling.

I felt much better about the gun, however, and went home happy. It appears that the AR likes lubricant, but heavyweight grease holds powder fouling and therefore the grease thickens, causing malfunctions. I cleaned the gun thoroughly, removed all traces of moly grease, and I have re-lubricated the gun with Dupont dry Teflon lubricant, which won’t have the same thickening problems as the grease.

I can see why piston setups are all the rage nowadays.

Regardless, I love this gun. It’s a beast and quite accurate. I have 1000 rounds of Wolf coming in next week and will probably run another 200 rounds through to break the gun in further. Will report again then.

3

Try running Mobil 1 in it, you’ll have a whole new appreciation for the AR platform. Proper lubrication is a must with these, and grease is definitely not proper, nor is Teflon alone (Been there).

Go ahead with dry-lubing everything with the Teflon, but then run it wet with Mobil 1 (I use 0w30). I doubt you’ll have another malfunction.

Nice gun BTW.

-matt

4

Scrub the heck out of it with solvent to get rid of the stuff you used. Dry. Apply a good quality gun oil (Weapon Shield, Slip2000, Break-Free, FP-10, Tetra, etc).

With proper lubrication out of the way, it makes it easier to troubleshoot other issues.

5

Is this rifle strictly for competition or does it also fill the role of home/personal defense. Just curious as to why you would put a light and visible laser on a competition carbine. You are adding a good deal of weight to the front that is going to be of no practical benefit.

6

Thanks, folks.

180 rounds of Wolf later…

First, a bit on Wolf: Overall, I didn’t see much difference in accuracy vs Remington or Federal .223. Carbon fouling seemed to be slightly higher than Remington or Federal, but not objectionably so.

The major problem I had was with 3 FTE’s, where the bolt would stay locked forward in battery and would not come out without a slightly pry with a screwdriver. Needless to say, Wolf obviously has a reason for its reputation. I am still very happy with it as a practice ammo (at 12 cents a round, it’s worth the slightly greater aggravation.) However, as a defense or combat round, there’s no way…

Second: Thanks for the tips on the lubrication. Dry lube as stated didn’t work well at all. Well, let me rephrase that statement, it worked, but didn’t work for long. Changing to oil seemed to help, but I was back to the old problem of short stroking on the gun.

I took a break from shooting and watched several people next to me shooting their AR’s with absolutely no problems at all. One fellow was shooting drills against a target which rotated parallel to and then perpendicular to his line of sight. I’ll have to try that once I get my short stroke issues worked out. Several other people had AR’s, on what looked like simple forged uppers, GI barrels, and holosights. Bam, bam, bam - no malfunctions. My fancy-shmancy billet AR, while punching extremely nice groups at 150’, was back to being a single shot rifle (for the most part.)

Third day of disappointment, then. I went home and started to clean the gun. I found out that my aluminum gas block has a lot of carbon surrounding it. That seems to be one thing Wolf is good for! Finding leaks…

I’m pretty sure now that I’m leaking gas at my gas block. It’s not a major leak, but it’s enough of a leak to drastically reduce the pressure at the bolt.

To be continued…

7

Unholy Mother of AR15s It’s Working!!!

I got rid of the DPMS aluminum gas block and replaced it with a Midwest Industries steel gas block. The steel gas block uses 3 x 10-24 set screws vs the aluminum gas block which used 2 8-32 set screws. I blue loctited both the gas tube as well as the set screws into the gas block and really torqued down on the set screws.

Big difference: 160 rounds of Wolf down the pipe, only 1 short stroke on the very first round! Here’s the kicker - the gun was shot bone dry! Just for the heck of it, I thought I’d see how the gun did without lubrication with the new gas block, then oil with Synthetic Motor Oil if I had problems. No problems = no oil.

Needless to say, I was impressed with the AR! Now I am having fun with this rifle!

The picture above is of the system installed into the range I shot at. It’s from a company called Patriot Range Technologies and it has a very cool programmable mode which allows you to create 20+ consecutive custom target operations. The target can assume “friend”, “side”, and “foe” stances for any time you want, then move to another distance for an additional challenge.

I programmed a drill that would move the target to 50’, flip to the side for 3 seconds, then pop to “foe” (to expose the target) for 2 seconds. That is a LOT of fun!