Roggio Arsenal Nightmare

**broseidon615** · 04-30-11, 19:10

BLUF: Think TWICE about Roggio Arsenal's AR15s before purchase.

After weeks of attempting to guide my friend in the right direction for his first AR purchase (I told him to get a BCM mid length with a Spikes lower), he decided to trade in his two shotguns for an AR near his dad's location. First glance at the Roggio it seemed decent but some immediate "WTFs?" came up. The biggest immediate thing noticeable was that the castlenut did not have any stake indents for the endplate to be securely staked....ok...no biggie, get a new endplate, or put some locktite on it and drive on. However, the biggest issue was my friend could NOT zero his rifle, and the rifle was shooting way to the right. Even with the windage knob moved all the way, he still could not zero his rifle. I figured maybe the detachable carrying handle was whack, so I tried to put my ARMS 40L-SP sight on to his rifle. to my surprise it would not even fit. The ARMS sight requires you to slide it on the rail, but the cut on the flat top receiver was too thick and could not clear the sight. later on, using a digital caliper, we were able to see that the cut on the flat top receiver was inconsistent and not made to spec. My theory is that it allowed the rear sight to be canted and causing zero issues. A HUGE FUBAR that fell through Roggio's Quality Check.

Castlenut issues...my BCM on the right

In addition to those issues, the Roggio lower had a hard time with fit with Pmags (gen 1 and 2), and Lancer Mags. fed USGI fine. Although some might consider this a "who cares?", it is a bit of an issue when you can't properly use all the mags readily available out there.

However, when I did open up the roggio, I was a bit impressed to see that the bolt carrier group was a M16 carrier, and the bolt was MPI inspected. and the barrel was a 1/7 twist. not bad, but that still can not make up for the other issues

Fortunately my friend got his money and shotgun back. It seems he learned the "buy once, cry once" lesson now, and says he's going to get a BCM instead.

**SWATcop556** · 04-30-11, 19:16

I'll hold back my shock.

**ohiorifleman** · 04-30-11, 20:59

Unless I am totally mistaken the only thing Roggio on that rifle would be the lower.- I only ever heard of them making stripped lowers and they had some huge QC issues including undersized magwells and mis-aligned receiver ext. threads which I believe caused them to go under. My guess is that whole rifle is a assemblage of the cheapest parts someone could find lucky he walked away from it.....

**broseidon615** · 04-30-11, 21:39

Originally Posted by ohiorifleman

Unless I am totally mistaken the only thing Roggio on that rifle would be the lower.- I only ever heard of them making stripped lowers and they had some huge QC issues including undersized magwells and mis-aligned receiver ext. threads which I believe caused them to go under. My guess is that whole rifle is a assemblage of the cheapest parts someone could find lucky he walked away from it.....

http://www.roggioarsenalusa.com/index_files/Page537.htm
Roggio does make complete firearms, and complete uppers

**broseidon615** · 05-01-11, 19:49

To make matters worse, the gunstore owner was a complete dumbf*ck.

he preceded to tell me that there aren't any standards for picatiny rails. Thinks Colt is a stupid company, tried to push a bushmaster as top of the line AR....then said that no one uses iron sights on ARs anyways....

, and didn't even want to acknowledge there was an issue with the rifle.... when I emailed him the post above, he simply said that "he's a working man, he has no time for emails"

Overall, the guy was a scmuck, and really just tried to rip my friend off.

**The_War_Wagon** · 05-01-11, 20:13

Didn't they go out of business already?

**Spiffums** · 05-01-11, 20:27

Well this is a new maker on me. I hadn't heard of them before. Probably a good sign right there.

**Suwannee Tim** · 05-01-11, 20:50

I go to Roggio's web site and follow the Map To Location link to Google and look at 822 Shannon Drive, a small low building. Roggio's interior photo shows a large building with at least a twenty foot ceiling and seemingly enough machine tools to turn out hundreds of ARs a day. Yet nobody has ever heard of them. Very strange.