Hi Folks,
I am moving away from the flat-wire Tubbs buffer springs I have been using in my AR-10s and AR-15s until recently for several reasons. The first, and less important reason, is that they stopped making them out of chrome silicon and now just use stainless steel, which would likely have the short life of the standard generic buffer springs, despite their advertising claims that they will last a long time.
Second, and far more critical, is what I discovered the hard way that a flat-wire buffer spring does to receiver extensions. When you remove the buffer and round-wire spring from a receiver extension, the round wire rolls over the buffer detent pretty smoothly without imparting much force to it. However, when you do the same with a buffer on top of a flat wire spring, each coil of the flat-wire spring hits the buffer detent and takes a lot more force to slide off of it. This causes the buffer detent to tilt forward and its side to strike the receiver extension each time a flat-wire coil slips over it. I always take care to keep the buffer detent depressed with a tool when removing the buffer, but there is a point when withdrawing the spring that you can't hold it down and it hits the receiver extension.
I never worried too much about this, as I have had the Tubbs flat-wire springs in all my modern ARs, and have taken buffers out many times over the years with all of them. These include 2 ARs with rifle receiver extensions and Cav Arms C1 stocks, and 2 with carbine receiver extensions with Rogers Super Stocs. All 4 of those ARs use OEM Colt hammer-forged 7075T6 receiver extensions, and so the buffer detent problem never occurred to me.
However, I just a few weeks ago built an AR with a collapsible stock using a 7075T6 receiver extension from one of the premium AR manufacturers. This receiver extension was not forged, but impact-extruded, but I didn't think it would make a difference. Well, I used a Tubbs flat-wire buffer spring in it, and this weekend I took the buffer out for only the second time in the life of the rifle, and after I had depressed the detent, pulled the buffer out, removed it from the spring, and was withdrawing the spring carefully, the detent broke a hole in the lip of the receiver extension that holds it down. I don't want to say what manufacturer made this receiver extension, as they advertise on this site and are universally considered a very premium outfit, but suffice it to say, I will never use either an impact-extruded receiver extension or anything made by them ever again.
To see whether the flat-wire buffer springs did this to other rifles, I pulled both the rifle-length receiver extensions from my rifles wet up with C1 stocks, and lo and behold, they both had a noticable divot in the aluminum where the buffer detent is held in place. These two rifles have had flat-wire springs in them for 7 years and have had the buffers removed likely 100 times, so they were much better-constructed, but it seems that the flat-wire spring is hard on any receiver extension.
Therefore, I am getting round-wire buffer springs for the AR-15s in chrome silicon, but am not sure who makes a good round-wire chrome silicon spring for an AR-10 (mine is an ArmaLite) with a rifle-length extension. It looks like Springco's RED and ORANGE springs are designed for carbine receiver extensions, and the only spring I have found made of chrome silicon that is listed specifically as for a rifle receiver extension is this one: https://www.bangswitchparts.com/prod...hrome-silicon/
However, given the suspiciously-low price and the lack of identification for a manufacturer, I think this might be of very suspect quality. Does anyone have any experience with this spring, or can anyone recommend a chrome silicon round-wire buffer spring designed specifically for .308 ARs with a rifle-length receiver extension?
Thanks in advance!
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