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A quote I read in another thread here while I was building my first AR, seems applicable once again. I believe the topic of conversation was the Colt 6920, but I may have the model number wrong. In any case:
1. You can build a better gun.
2. You can build a cheaper gun.
3. You cannot build a better and cheaper gun.
Now, I've got somewhere around $1600 into my AR since I added the Redi-Mag, and I'm far from being made out of money. It took me two years to build that rifle, working for $9 an hour at a local gun store, then getting hired by FedEx in just enough time to have my hours drastically cut by $4/gallon gasoline. I bring that up to say that I know full-well that you can't always drop a huge hunk of cash on a gun and that money gets tight.
So I spent 2 years, buying quality components when I had enough saved up. Because the AR platform is most definitely one where you get what you pay for, and I'd handled Oly guns while working at the gun store...
Now, after building it myself with attention to detail, I have a rifle that I would run at any school. I wouldn't be foolish enough to say "it's as good as a Noveske", because John builds these things for a living. But I can keep up. And there's no doubt that it'll outrun a lot of off-the-shelf rifles, because I've done it.
I never thought that made me a snob. I thought it just meant I thought things through and planned according to my budget.
I wouldn't put Del-ton uppers in the same category as Olympic.
I didn't intend to, and apologize if that's how somebody took my post. I've never handled, much less seen, a Del-Ton in person.
My post was just intended to reinforce that quality parts and things done right (staking, torquing of a barrel to the upper, etc.) cost, but it can still be done, even on a budget, over time. When a person has to go through and spend some more money to fix things, or replace their standard handguard with a free float and wind up with two... In the long run, I'd hazard a guess that an equivalent amount of money gets spent.
I just don't care for snobbery comments, when in the long run it's primarily a matter of when you spend the money.
From the handful I've seen, the Olympic uppers typically have no staking at all, extremely tight chambers and in the case of the pistol caliber uppers, canted front sight towers. When watching Olympic guns in class, they usually have numerous failures to extract or failures to chamber.
With the Del-Ton uppers, I typically see non F marked front sight assemblies and poor staking on the BCGs. In classes I have yet to see anything other than the commonly seen issues encountered with every brand of AR.
Neither are high-end guns, but I'd trust my life to my Del-ton upper, but wouldn't fire an Olympic unless I was forced to
First things first. AR reviews in ANY magazine are generally VOID of any serious technical data. Why? The reviewer is generally a trigger puller. There is nothing wrong with being a trigger puller, but they tend not to dive into the construction of the weapon, and materials used. There are exceptions to the rule though, but they are few and far between.
So is the DEL-TON AR good for most people? Most likely. Would it be high up on my list as a defensive weapon? No.
To date NO MANUFACTURER (RRA, BM, Armalite, DPMS, Oly, Del-Ton, etc) can compete with a BCM/LMT upper and a LMT lower (as you can get a complete weapon for UNDER $1k).
So the question that begs to be asked is, why spend $800-$900 on a lesser quality weapon when you can get the above for about the same price????
C4
Last edited by C4IGrant; 04-28-09 at 13:55.
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