What if you leave the cam pin out?

[Uni-Vibe]

Instruction manual of my old Bushmaster says if you leave it out, the rifle will fire and WILL EXPLODE.

I always wondered about that. I'm looking at my disassembled rifle now. It seems to me that what would happen is the rifle would fire, the bolt carrier goes back as usual, but since the cam pin is missing, the bolt won't unlock. It will stay put. But I don't see how that would make the rifle explode?

[AndyLate]

The bolt wouldn't rotate (lock) when the round is chambered and it would be catastrophic if fired. If it locked, the bolt would remain in the barrel extension. It would be fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the system that the cam pin is missing during reassembly.

Andy

[titsonritz]

Just don't do it. - Not Nancy

[mack7.62]

Think about it, without the cam pin you are turning the bolt carrier into a straight blow back, bad things are going to happen at the rear of the receiver/receiver extension when it hits there.

[TexHill]

Newton's third law of physics is still in effect even without a cam pin.

[MistWolf]

Without the cam pin in place, the bolt will not rotate and lock in place. When fired, the case pushes back against the bolt isn't locked in place when the AR is fired, the case will push the bolt out of battery while the pressure is building to its peak- 50,000 psi or more. With the bolt out of battery and the case out of and no longer supported by the chamber, the case can no longer contain the pressure and will split, or worse, burst. There will be an out of battery kaboom with potentially catastrophic results resulting in the destruction of the rifle and possibly fatal injuries to the shooter.

[opngrnd]

^Really makes me feel like I take proper engineering for granted.

[lysander]

Instruction manual of my old Bushmaster says if you leave it out, the rifle will fire and WILL EXPLODE.

I always wondered about that. I'm looking at my disassembled rifle now. It seems to me that what would happen is the rifle would fire, the bolt carrier goes back as usual, but since the cam pin is missing, the bolt won't unlock. It will stay put. But I don't see how that would make the rifle explode?

Something like this will happen:

[Uni-Vibe]

Makes sense. After seeing how my new AR6951 operates, in blowback mode, I thought that blowback might work there, too. But thinking about it, there's a world of difference between a 9mm and a 5.56. It would indeed go kaboom.

[markm]

One would have to be too retarded to field strip the gun and get the bolt group apart to forget to put the cam pin back in and attempt to fire it.

It's a self preventing problem.