
Originally Posted by
Iraqgunz
I fail to see how lubricating the buffer spring would have made the weapon more reliable. I never leave the Springer buffer on any of my weapons and they seem to be working 100 percent just fine. Maybe I'm missing something or do something wrong.

I could not tell you; I am only relating the fact that the weapon had issues until the spring and buffer were lubed, at which point it began to operate correctly.
I am not the owner of the gun, nor would I have thought of that as a possible source of issues. I was purely a spectator to the incident, but the gun definitely did not run to begin with. A number of fixes were attempted without success. It's possible that the gun was breaking in and the problems went away coincidentally after the spring and buffer were lubed, as I believe the weapon to have been brand new and almost never fired.
I would guess, based on the number of rounds I fired at that course, that the lube was applied somewhere around the 400 round mark. Prior to that the gun ran very poorly and the shooter was quite annoyed.
So whether one should have to lube their spring and buffer is not something I could tell you; obviously if your guns run well without lube there it's not always necessary. Maybe this particular gun was marginal to begin with, and a normal amount of buffer friction was still enough to disrupt cycling. Or maybe the .223 ammo I believe the owner to have been using was a little weak, and the gun broke in over 500 rounds and the lube was a coincidence. But there was clearly a point where the gun went from "runs terribly" to "runs fine" and it was right after the spring and buffer were lubed, unless I am remembering things incorrectly.
I have a message out to the guy who was actually shooting it so hopefully I will be able to get more details later today.
Full disclosure: I'm the editor of Calibre Magazine, which is Canada's gun magazine. In the past I've done consulting work for different manufacturers and OEM suppliers, but not currently. M4C's disclosure policy doesn't seem to cover me but we do have advertisers, although I don't handle that side of things and in general I do not know who is paying us at any given time.
Bookmarks