Who has luck with cheap / Franken AR's?

[223to45]

Are you going to train people and burn up barrels and bolts on a $1200-$2,000 ar that will last 20k rounds before a barrel and bolt change. Or would rather use a $300 dollar rifle and change the bolt at 15k rounds.

A quality AR will last more then 20K rounds.

[robbins290]

ironically, it never happens. A few ammo related stoppages is about it. And that's maybe 1 or 2 in a couple thousand rounds. Tho i do periodic maintenance and clean and lube them every week.

[Ron3]

I have a couple buddies who bought new Daniel Defense rifles in the last couple years. (Cops) but theyve only fired them enough to zero. Both Aimpoints iirc.

I need to get them to the range and get a few hundred rounds through them.

I recently tried to find another BCM upper since the two I've had worked (11.5 and a 14.5 both with FSB) but they are out of stock of everything but keymod.

Still not willing to give up, I ordered another new complete Armalite.

[robbins290]

A quality AR will last more then 20K rounds.

Yes it will, i was talking about barrels and bolts.

[Renegade04]

Personally, I make it a practice to not build cheap (low quality) "franken" ARs. Over the past 15 years, I have built right at 10 ARs and never had an issue that I could not solve right away. One problem I did have was due to the fact that I put the hammer spring in wrong. Never did that again. The other was a barrel in which the barrel extension was not headspaced properly. Replaced the barrel and no issue after that. The cheapest build I have right now is with a PSA 16" M4 type upper on a McKay Ent. lower that I built. Runs great. I find that to many people know little to nothing as to how an AR operates and how each component works together. They have no troubleshooting skills. I find that many of the issues are the operators, not the weapon, but often times, choice of ammo (cheap junk) is the culprit. The fact is, you can build an inexpensive AR (below $600) and have a good running weapon. It all depends on the choice of the parts used and the one who assembles everything.

[The_War_Wagon]

I LOVE coming back to M4C, and reading these refreshing truths.

You WARN people on other forums, NOT to cheap out on their build... and they do so anyways. Frankenbuild breaks, and they're all - "WHUT happened??!!"


EXACTLY what we warned would happen.

[Firefly]

I’m not defending Frankenguns but I have a mutt AR that does bretty guud.

CAVEAT: all the parts are to spec. I don’t care what people say. The dimensions of a lower DOES matter. The $50 poverty pony seems okay until it starts messing up. That said, some people seriously do charge for the rollmark.

Like I won’t dare an AR-10 build unless I have Armalite parts. Eagle Arms me all you want. They didn’t just buy the name. I’m kinda meh on Aero. Do-able but you aren’t saving that much.

Specs matter. Dimensions matter. Headspace matters.

PSA builds can be hit or miss. I know Barfcom likes their Punisher skulls and meme lowers. But they are retards and paint-huffers.

I naively thought the Colt train would be up and going again. Nope. It likely would have minus the hysteria.

Realistically you should have two solid ARs of similar pattern. Not dragon chasing a fad.

And I say mutt or Mischling AR as opposed to Frankengun. Frankengun implies I robbed graves. A mutt means two quality parts of a quality brand fell in love and out came a rifle that just works.

[Ron3]

Yes, mutt is a better word.

I also agree two proven rifles that can share parts is what is needed. Everything else is just bonus.

[turnburglar]

I had a real Colt M4 for a couple years, so I am familiar with the TDP. When it came time to building or buying my own guns though I have always deviated from the norm. I first wanted to buy my own carbine since sandy hook happened. I was deployed at the time reading all the doom and gloom on this very forum. The AR15 was about to go extinct and I wasn't even CONUS!! What is a guy to do? How about a PSA premium build kit? Comes with an FN CHF barrel and a C158 bolt how bad can it be? Well I built that kit into a rifle back in 2013, and it has had a pile of ammunition ran through it since. It was my main 556 gun for the last shooting season. The only part I have changed on it was the barrel. Not because the PSA FN barrel was shot out. It lives on another build, and I even measured the gas port at 0.076. Not bad for a 16" mid length gas system, that the forum SWEARS is over gassed. Naw I just trade barrels like girls, because I thought I wanted a 14.5 pin and weld light weight, when that was the craze. Then I started shooting matches where my gun was too hot to hold after the 3rd stage. So then I was like; all the cool kids have an 18" rifle has heavy barrel, so thats what Im doing. I ****ing hated it immediately. It just made my 556 carbine feel too much like my MSR10. Now I got the newest hotness from BRT cause Im too poor to make a thread about how disappointed in KAC I am.

So my main match rifle is a PSA based mutt. I also have one of their 10.5 pistol kits built on an anderson lower. I didn't like the rail or MD that came on it, but in true budget fashion I found a dope $100 rail from Primary arms, and added a used BCM comp. I can't tell you how much I love this "pistol" that cost me less to build than a glock goes for today. It has a random nitride barrel that measured 0.074. Not severely over gassed especially when you consider this thing eats cases of russian ammo.

The rifle I have had the most issues ever out of was my factory built Savage MSR 10. I sent that thing back to savage like 4 times. They even sent me a brand new gun but in a different caliber. Cause I wanted to swap from 308 to shoot 6.5 cool kid. Even the brand new gun didn't run right. Did I send it back to savage for a 5th time? No. This is when I learned the lesson that there is a difference between an employee that works the line, and a true gun smith. Savage does not have a true AR smith under their employment. When I finally asked my local gun smith to take a wack at it, they smoothed out the chamber, adjusted the chamber mouth, and polished up most of the bolt face. They didn't use a single aftermarket part in a gun that would NOT run straight from the manufacture. They simply waved their gun smithing magic wand, and the rifle has eaten 500 rounds over the last season without a single stoppage. In true Savage fashion though the barrel is a shooter.

My BCM mutt is a factory BCM upper, on a spikes lower built with some random lower parts kit. It has a larue trigger that has given me issues. The BCM extractor spring also went soft on me somewhere around 2k. This gun shoots well, but gets shot the least. My wife thinks it is hers and won't let me paint it or add optics.

I like to think of an AR15 more like a holistic system, and tend not to judge it by the roll mark on the lower. Either parts are in spec and work, or they don't and you will find out pretty quickly if you actually shoot it. When ever I hear stories of dudes in a class having a gun go down, I always want to know: "is that gun brand new to you?" When you think of an AR like a 'life support system' that everyone likes to compare it too; no one mentions that with real life support systems you have to constantly check, test, and verify their function. You can't just be like: "Aww man well Boeing put that shit together so you know it works!" or "It's a Lockheed Martin man, it will never fail you." No. You test that POS no matter who built it. And if it works, it works. Period. Too often, dudes act like PSA parts are made of chinese pot metal or something.

EDIT: and I shoot a lot of AR centric matches were dudes have all kinds of wacky calibers. The number one cause of a stoppage or malfunction is the crap ammo someone reloaded themselves. Using even some of the cheapest factory made ammunition with good magazines, I have seen incredible reliability. In fact my AR's are MORE reliable than my glock 19 G3 which gets a stove pipe randomly every 300-700 rounds.

[AndyLate]

I think there are two completely different AR builds (maybe 3).

A Frankenbuild is a gun that started and finished as a budget build or was a box of unrelated parts that ended up as a gun.

We will call the second category a mutt because FF's mojo is strong this month. Heinz 57 is accurate as well. A purpose built gun assembled from carefully selected quality parts that may come from a variety of manufacurers. I have one built around a BRT barrel, BCM upper, Sionics gutless lower and phosphate BCH, LaRue trigger, ALG rail, Magpul buttstock, BCM PG. It's a mutt, but I would not call it a frankenbuild. It's carefully assembled, smooth, and the gun I envisioned when I started.

I assembled 6 ARs before I bought my first complete one. I researched here a lot, made mostly good choices, ended up with a box of lesser parts that grew into a decent frankenpistol (number 6).

I bought 3 upper receiver groups, one BCM (1st and solid), one PSA premium (2nd - meh), and LMT (14.5" p&w - solid).

I bought the LMT upper complete with a Troy DI quad rail on the EE, ordered a complete LMT Defender lower, and made my very own SPM 14. It's not even a mutt, it's more like a lunchbox build I paid for.

Factory guns are great, but I love the AR because it's modular and can be assembled completely from component parts with a lot of careful research, a basic mechanical understanding, and a suprisingly small amount of tools.

If I wanted to just buy a gun, it would be another platform.

Andy