Practical or Retarded?

[PA PATRIOT]

Had a new group of shooters at the club last week who wanted to join the Military Rifle matches and were sighting the rifles in when I noticed all eight AR builds were all identical to each other. So I had to ask how they set up their rifles and got a surprising answer, first all were using a 16" PSA carbine gas length barrels, Semi-Auto carriers, Standard carbine springs and Carbine buffers. When I asked why such a build the leader of the group stated it was to ensure that the rifles would function with any steel cased ammo as that is all they could afford to buy in bulk and brass cased ammunition most likely would never be used.

So is this sound thinking if the owner was only ever going to run steel cased Wolf or Tula out of a recreational rifle or would such a set up batter its self over the long haul. For what it was worth I fired one of the guns and it did not appear to have excessive bolt velocity/recoil and function and ejection seemed normal enough.

[markm]

Makes sense for their needs I guess. I'd sub an H buffer however. Almost nothing runs good with a CAR buffer.... unless they're 100% underpowered ammo, and never any Full .223 or 5.56mm

[fivepointoh]

Makes sense for their needs I guess. I'd sub an H buffer however. Almost nothing runs good with a CAR buffer.... unless they're 100% underpowered ammo, and never any Full .223 or 5.56mm

I used to have a Colt 16" HBAR that had a Colt 14.5" barrel with DD 7.0 swapped in by ADCO. Running a standard CAR buffer shooting AE223 (you could get 3000 rounds for about $650 shipped back then lol) would cause that rifle to malfunction every damn round. This was approximately the 2005 time period before we had such wonderful science behind buffers, gas ports, etc. I swapped to an H2 buffer and upgraded the extractor spring and O ring and it then ran fine on everything.

[markm]

This was approximately the 2005 time period before we had such wonderful science behind buffers, gas ports, etc.

I still can't wrap my head around how long it took for the AR/M4 world to figure out that the CAR buffer and a gaping gas port are never going to run good. I mean... just playing with an adjustable gas block is an amazing education.

[fivepointoh]

I still can't wrap my head around how long it took for the AR/M4 world to figure out that the CAR buffer and a gaping gas port are never going to run good. I mean... just playing with an adjustable gas block is an amazing education.

LOL and just think, you were still on TOS then too :P Back then I was in college, young, and didn't know all the science behind gas ports and what not. Not to mention you hardly ever saw any TECH threads discussing gas ports, AGB's, etc. Only buffer weights and extractor mods were readily available to read/discuss.

[markm]

I remember guys going to H2 and H3 buffers. I was thinking... what are these goofballs messing with? They're going to screw up their guns and reliability.

[fivepointoh]

If it works for them, why not. I mean if thinking in true SHTF on the move type situation, wouldn't you want a rifle that functions with virtually every type of ammo possible? Hazard to guess that on the move it would be much easier finding steel case ammo, than brass given prices. W/ that said, I'm not attesting to any certain quality of PSA rifles. I've never owned a PSA product and therefore would be out of my lane.

I guess it just boils down to what you need the rifle to do.

[Pork Chop]

I run a BCM 14.5 midlength with an H buffer and carbine spring on almost a pure diet of shitty steel cased stuff and it runs fine if I lube the piss out of it.
Local sources in my area are still selling AE223 for $10.99/bx so **** them, I'll shoot steel.

I think people overthink this stuff. Lube, shoot, rinse repeat.

[rapomstage3]

I run a BCM 14.5 midlength with an H buffer and carbine spring on almost a pure diet of shitty steel cased stuff and it runs fine if I lube the piss out of it.
Local sources in my area are still selling AE223 for $10.99/bx so **** them, I'll shoot steel.

I think people overthink this stuff. Lube, shoot, rinse repeat.

I second this. I might get an occasional failure to lock to rear but even that is rare. Bcm middy. Colt 6920. Sr 15.

[sdelam]

I have at least 3k rounds with a similar CMMG. always ran fine for me. Evan with the 3-400 reloaded steel cases using a Lee full length sizing die and a FCD. Found I could get 3 loads on steel cases before the neck would split. Tried it just to see if it would work.