Side Charger fix in 6AL4v
Hi all. Been lurking here for a bit but this is my first post. Also searched this topic but found nothing, so here goes:
I'm a machinist, but know guns well enough to gunsmith a tad. Been building AR's for 20 years and tweeking them up.
I bought a side charging AR because I was intrigued with the idea, and to build a quiet Coyote leveling 300AAC. We have lots of those around the chicken houses these days.
After assembly/disassembly of the bolt handle a few times, I noticed it was mushrooming out considerably. It was also shooting loose. Now if this mushrooming were to continue the socket head screw could go deep enough into the carrier to stop the bolt. Not good. There needed to be a way to limit the depth the treads could go into the carrier. Also I was rapping my knuckles on the QD scope levers and my hand would slip off the lightly knurled factory handle.
Those import YSF screws can be brittle as well. The last thing I wanted was to snap that off in the carrier!
So, I got the longest shoulder bolt (Grade 12.9) in 10-32 I could find and turned a Titanium cover it could fit into.
https://carcrusher.imgbb.com (pic 1662 & 1663).
To take it 100% I decided to grind the bolt carrier flat (pic 1692 & 1694) in the mill and teflon coat the thing with GunKote.
I had not noticed before but the carrier was tapered ever so slightly at the threaded hole.
That flat will let the shoulder seat evenly and it shouldn't shoot loose now. Plenty of friction surface.
The bolt is super strong (I can stand on it) and the Ti won't corrode. I left the grooves semi-sharp (no finishing step after turning) to grab my finger or the web of my left hand. Now I can tell by feel where my hand is without looking for the handle. My hand misses the QD levers and it didn't shoot loose either.
The whole goal of this was build a weapon i could charge from port arms carry and to never let the grip leave my right hand.
The journey never ends does it.
