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Thread: Armalite AR103GN18

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Oct 2012
    Location
    Las Vegas, Nv
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    7 (100%)
    Good for you man. �� Looks like it's running great for you. Glad to see it. Please do keep us updated as to reliability and if any issues pop up. I know there aren't many reviews of these guns out there, so I'm interested in how things progress. Thanks for sharing.

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    So I started feeling guilty for not cleaning it in so long, and I wondered what 500 rds of copper fouling was doing to my accuracy:



    It's a pretty safe bet the one shot that opened that group up to 0.741" was me, and not the rifle. Dammit. That's a 5-shot group, BTW.

    The other thing I wanted to check while I was there was to see how fast I was driving the little 110gr Carbine bullets. I've had a few good calls with no holes in paper, so I'm a little worried they're going up in a puff of smoke halfway to the target. Doesn't look like it, and I'm still amazed how accurate these cheap little bullets are for what they are:



    I guess I'll stop feeling bad about not cleaning it...
    Last edited by Matt in TN; 06-25-17 at 21:33.

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    Photobucket issues killed all my pics in this thread, but with yesterday's match I just passed the "1,000 rounds with no cleaning" test I had in my head. It still runs like a sewing machine and shoots like a laser. Last weekend it averaged just over 1 MOA groups with a sub-MOA thrown in here and there. I have a big match coming up in two weeks so I'm going to break down and clean it. I'm curious to see if it returns to its reliable sub-MOA accuracy it started with after I actually clean the barrel.

    Here's a vid from yesterday's match. This was a benefit for the Night Stalker Association (https://www.nsa160.com/), who takes care of soldiers and families from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR).

    Crawl through a tube, drag Rescue Randy (who has all of your magazines in his chest rig), retrieve your pistol magazines from Randy, shoot all pistol targets, retrieve rifle magazines from Randy, climb tower and shoot rifle targets. No bonus points for going all Ninja Warrior on the tube and the tower - but it sure was fun!!! Rifle targets are 10" plates at 150-200 yds, and the misses are my fault and not the rifle's. My goal is always to go 1 for 1 with the rifle, but if you look and listen closely you can see my arms shaking and my breath heaving - so I'm cutting myself a LITTLE slack!

    Last edited by Matt in TN; 08-27-17 at 12:12.

  4. #14
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    Follow-up: I had my first two failures at around 1,200 rounds. The first was an FTE in which the empty case got crammed above the new round feeding in from below and locked everything up (see below). Easily cleared by grabbing the empty case and yanking it out by hand. But it caught me by surprise and made me wonder what caused that.



    Not long after, I had a FTX that stopped me cold. The extractor slipped over the rim of the case and left it in the chamber. No matter how many times I tried to re-seat the bolt and pull the empty brass out of the chamber, the extractor would slip over the rim again. I even swapped in my spare (brand new and clean) bolt and it had the same issue - so I had to knock the brass out with a range rod. I replaced my bolt with my new and clean spare and everything ran fine after that.

    I did clean the rifle at the 1,000 rd mark, but I admit I did not detail strip the ejector and extractor from the bolt and clean those - so I'm blaming my laziness and lack of attention to detail for these malfunctions. When I did strip the bolt both areas were filthy as would be expected. Lesson learned - I'll clean or swap bolts every 500rds or so now to be safe.

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Florida
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    Interesting. The one stop I had with my low-round DEF10 looked like that. It too was during a competition.

    It took a bit to clear. When I later inspected the rifle everything looked okay but the lube had been blown out (sooner than expected) and it was dirty and fairly dry.

    I sprayed oil in the action liberally and it worked fine afterwards.

  6. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    652
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    Follow-up, just because I noticed in my handloading logbook I'm over 4,000 rds on this thing now. Still going strong and running like a very accurate sewing machine! I do clean the bolt every 500 rds or so and that seems to be the preventative maintenance that it needs, because it's never had those issues above again.

  7. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    East of Atlanta
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    Good to see the Armalite still running good.
    “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” – Thomas Jefferson.

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