View Full Version : AR-15 went for a mud bath
If your weapon goes for a swim, or a dive in the mud, optic and all, what is the cleaning protocol?
Seriously? Is this a joke?
Uhh.... Rinse it off and keep shooting. That was common sense. Once im back home id give it a good cleaning.
Hose or bottle of water, wipe down, relube. give it a good cleaning when you get home.
Garden hose, relube and keep shooting.
GeorgiaBoy
06-17-12, 19:51
The same cleaning protocol any other cleaning entails..
Hose, wipe, lube, proceed? :jester:
It actually wasn't intended to be a joke. What I was honestly wondering is if the action gets full of mud/dirt/debris if the cleaning needed to be more detailed than normal. This was the first time I've gotten my rifle mud-caked (usually it just gets dusty and dirty around here).
Flush & rinse it really well with dishsoap & hot water to remove the organic material. Then hit it with some type of solvent to remove all oil & grease and any grit trapped by the lubricant. Re-lube. If the wife wasn't home, I'd be tempted to run it through the dishwasher
after the Night Infiltration Course at FT Knox My M4 was packed full of sand and Mud due to the rain the Night and day of our FTX.
we Put it under the water buffalo and Hosed it down.
cleaned, Lubed and we were back in action
hell One night in a Massive storm My PLT got smoked and again Mud city we stuck them in the shower then . it was so bad i could not get My Bolt carrier back had to put the butt stock on the ground and Put My boot on the charging handle just to get it opened . and after that still worked
Kickin-Ewoks
06-17-12, 22:43
Flush & rinse it really well with dishsoap & hot water to remove the organic material. Then hit it with some type of solvent to remove all oil & grease and any grit trapped by the lubricant. Re-lube. If the wife wasn't home, I'd be tempted to run it through the dishwasher
Thats funny! I came home last week and my AR was muddy, my wife told me to put it in the dishwasher. I told her she was crazy; but now that I think about it, she may be the perfect wife.
Rinse with water, clean and relube
LowSpeed_HighDrag
06-17-12, 23:29
OP,
I can see why you would ask this question. A lot of shooters who drop over $1000 on this new piece of machinery dont have alot of experience getting their rifles dirty. For those of us who were in the military, we crawled through mud plenty of times with our rifles, only to hose them off, clean them, relube, and turn them back in. Have no fear, your AR15 can handle the mess. Follow Mistwolf's advice and you wont have a problem.
14 posts deleted, in case anybody wanted to keep track.
Some folks who should know better seem to have lost their goddamned minds.
EDIT: If one decides to use the Report Post button....stop once you've done that. The staff is has the necessary judgement and the mandate/capability to take action if such is required, TYVM.
everyusernametaken
06-17-12, 23:51
Thats funny! I came home last week and my AR was muddy, my wife told me to put it in the dishwasher. I told her she was crazy; but now that I think about it, she may be the perfect wife.
Don't put a rifle in the dishwasher, and certainly NOT with dishwasher detergent! It is a highly corrosive environment, especially for aluminum. Even hard anodized coatings can be damaged.
Personally, Id strip it and hose it down or wash in sink ot get mud off, then clean/lube as normal.
Dishwashers should work great(never tried as I dont have one and the mom would KILL me if she found out I experimented with hers). Ive read good things about dishwashers. I have used dishsoap in a pinch and it actually breaks up the carbon pretty well.
Dishwasher with lube should be good to go, but Id look it over to make sure there werent chunks left.
Don't put a rifle in the dishwasher, and certainly NOT with dishwasher detergent! It is a highly corrosive environment, especially for aluminum. There are areas of exposed aluminum on the AR that you would never want exposed to this.
what exactly in dishwasher detergent is corrosive to aluminum? The aluminum is anodized. It forms a hard layer unlike iron which forms rust.
If an ar cant withstand a dishwasher, Im moving towards aks
everyusernametaken
06-18-12, 00:01
what exactly in dishwasher detergent is corrosive to aluminum? The aluminum is anodized. It forms a hard layer unlike iron which forms rust.
Even anodized coatings can be damaged by caustic detergents used for dishwashers, but there are areas of exposed aluminum anyway. Dish soap in a bottle is NOT the same as dishwasher detergent. Who suggests actually using a dishwasher for this purpose?
sinlessorrow
06-18-12, 00:26
Even anodized coatings can be damaged by caustic detergents used for dishwashers, but there are areas of exposed aluminum anyway. Dish soap in a bottle is NOT the same as dishwasher detergent. Who suggests actually using a dishwasher for this purpose?
he is correct, most dishwasher detergents can severely damage aluminum
Hmm, just looked into it. I didnt know dishwasher detergent was so caustic. I have used dow dishsoap without issue but havnt used a dishwasher. I just read a person or 2 here using it. Even without the detergent it should remove the mud so it can be cleaned normally. A hose or utility sink should also work just fine.
dishsoap ... detergent
Two completely different cleaning agents that don't have interchangable uses.
One is a moslty natural soft usually non~toxic cleanser, the other is a laboratory product that can poison, burn flesh and under certain conditions, eat metal.
Try the dishwasher with soap, or if the whole dishwasher gives you the piss shivers now, go to the car wash and hit things up with the engine degreaser or even just high pressure soap then clear water rinse.
If it doesn't melt all the various unprotected and varying alloys aluminum bits on a car, its certainly not going to harm an AR
Again: soap is what you are after, not detergent
I did forget to warn about dish washer soap. I was thinking more along the lines of the hot water & spray which often is good for getting crapola out of tight places.
DO NOT use regular dishsoap in the dishwasher, or if you do, use only a tiny amount. My son made that mistake once. Soapsuds poured out of the dishwasher during the entire wash cycle. The only thing for it was to let it run to get the soap out while my son slung the mop like a madman trying to keep the mess from spreading to the rest of the house!
Don't know what kind of optics you have. But for the AR you just clean it, outside with a water hose to get the big stuff off. Then field strip it, dry it, clean it and oil it. You don't need soapy water, nor a dish washer, or anything fancy, I really wouldn't want to put it in my kitchen or bathroom sinks. Like someone else said, if you've never been in the military you may be a little hesitant, but Soldiers have treated them like shit for forty years now. At Campbell we cleaned ours in a parts washer, plastics and all.
Eurodriver
06-18-12, 08:18
Has anyone else here showered with their weapon?
The coffee drinking majors at places like Al Asad usually hated that. :confused:
As others have said, just flush/clean it out, dry off and relube and you will be good to go. I will never forget the first time I was issued my weapon in basic training. That rifle looked like it had been drug behind a vehicle to the range every day since it was made. The thing rattled, the upper and lower were loose as hell and in general looked like shit. I thought to myself that it would never operate worth a damn. Needless to say, that old Colt never missed a beat, misfired or jammed ever, not one time and was shockingly accurate being as old as it was and how terrible it looked. I drug that rifle through hell and back and it ran like a top.
Doc Safari
06-18-12, 09:38
Don't put a rifle in the dishwasher, and certainly NOT with dishwasher detergent! It is a highly corrosive environment, especially for aluminum. Even hard anodized coatings can be damaged.
You are correct. I put an aluminum magazine in the dishwasher and the finish came out completely ruined. I have not noticed any corrosion to the aluminum (yet), but that magazine is definitely not mint condition anymore.
One thing the OP seems to be asking in a roundabout way is whether a mud-caked weapon might need to be detail-stripped in order to clean, or if hosing it down completely assembled is enough.
I have always wondered at what point do you draw the line where you need to take the weapon down to pins and springs to clean it?
Eurodriver
06-18-12, 10:02
I have always wondered at what point do you draw the line where you need to take the weapon down to pins and springs to clean it?
Short answer? Every time you have time.
Doc Safari
06-18-12, 10:20
Short answer? Every time you have time.
Seriously?
Short of dropping it into a swamp I thought the AR was a weapon you shouldn't completely disassemble very often.
LowSpeed_HighDrag
06-18-12, 11:46
Seriously?
Short of dropping it into a swamp I thought the AR was a weapon you shouldn't completely disassemble very often.
In a deployed environment, weapons get cleaned during down time. If its sitting in your closet for months at a time, there shouldnt be any reason to clean it on a regular basis.
Doc Safari
06-18-12, 11:51
In a deployed environment, weapons get cleaned during down time. If its sitting in your closet for months at a time, there shouldnt be any reason to clean it on a regular basis.
You're right. It's early Monday morning and I'm going back and forth between the 'puter and ranch business so I looked at it from my civilian perspective.
Still, I wouldn't want to go removing the FCG pins, takedown pins and springs, pistol grip, mag catch, and whatnot, unless the gun got really full of crud.
Kickin-Ewoks
06-18-12, 13:01
Don't put a rifle in the dishwasher, and certainly NOT with dishwasher detergent! It is a highly corrosive environment, especially for aluminum. Even hard anodized coatings can be damaged.
I didn't put it through the dishwasher, I took the garden hose to it then went back to my normal cleaning routine. I just thought it was funny because my wife suggested it.
I shoot in the rain and mud when ever I get the chance so I know rinsing it with a garden hose won't hurt. Sometimes I use a Magic Eraser on the FDE pistol grip and buttstock but not very often.
You're right. It's early Monday morning and I'm going back and forth between the 'puter and ranch business so I looked at it from my civilian perspective.
Still, I wouldn't want to go removing the FCG pins, takedown pins and springs, pistol grip, mag catch, and whatnot, unless the gun got really full of crud.
Soldiers aren't even allowed to go that deep.
I think that this has been sufficiently answered at this point.
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