First attempt at building my own AR

[slickh]

I was about 100% sure you would not, but I thought I would offer. Should you know anyone else that that wants to trade a Noveske for a DD upper please refer them to me.

Have fun with your rifle. By the way, I bought a NSR also but will wait until I get all parts to assemble.

Norm

[SteveL]

Since DD uppers and lowers are hard to come by now-a-days try posting it in the EE for sale or trade. You may have a hard time trading it outright for a Noveske, but you never know. However, I'd be surprised if you couldn't sell it, possibly for all your money back since it's unused. Then you could buy a Noveske.

[SteveL]

I finally made it out to shoot my rifle with new upper today. Unfortunately the only ammo I had on hand was Wolf 55 gr. hollow point. Since the upper was completely rebuilt I needed to resight my BUS and AccuPoint. I started out at 25 yds. to make sure I was on paper and then backed up to 100 yds. Overall I got a pretty decent zero for both types of sights, but I'm sure it could be fine tuned some more with better ammo.

The interesting part was that I had recently installed a McFarland gas ring. I placed an order with G&R recently and it was only $3 so I figured it would try it out to see what happened. I noticed when I first installed this gas ring that the bolt was noticeably harder to move by hand inside the bolt carrier. (I should also note the rifle has a BAD lever installed.) So while shooting I had a string of multiple failures. They included short stroking, failure to lock open after the last round of all but one magazine, and several misfeeds. This went on for several magazines. All magazines are P-Mags with only a couple hundred rounds through each one at the most. Some were brand new. I figured there were a few different possibilities:

The Ammo
The BAD lever
Improper assembly of the upper
The McFarland gas ring
The magazines

I didn't have any other ammo to try so I couldn't test this one.

I've only run a few magazines since installing the BAD lever but there were no malfunctions so I didn't want to pull it off right away.

Improper assembly of the upper seemed very unlikely. The upper was assembled by Neil at Gun Gallery in Jacksonville and he's top notch.

The McFarland gas ring seemed the most obvious possibility IMO. When I noticed how much more force was needed to move the bolt inside the carrier after installing it I wondered if that would ever cause problems.

The mags were a possibility, but I decided to remove the McFarland gas ring and reinstall the original gas rings that came on the bolt before testing mag after mag again.

Before anyone asks, the rifle was well lubed with Frog Lube prior to shooting today.

I swapped the original gas rings back in, re-lubed the bolt (I had wiped it off while I was handling it) and put everything back together. I now started loading only two rounds into each magazine to test them out and I never had a single malfunction again. I know there are several knowledgeable folks here who speak highly of the McFarland gas rings but my rifle doesn't seem to like it. Granted, I was only shooting Wolf ammo and I might have seen better performance out of true 5.56 ammo, but I didn't have any to test. As it is, I like shooting Wolf because it's more affordable and if I can't shoot that ammo with the McFarland gas ring then it won't go back in.

ETA: I really like the Noveske NSR rail. It'll be even that much better when they start rolling out the other accessories that are coming for it. I also decided I didn't care much for the BCM Gunfighter grip so I put the MIAD back on about halfway through the session and it felt much better to me. I really like the angle of the BCM grip but I find it a little too slender. If it was a tad thicker from side to side it would be perfect IMO.

[ccarrier]

i really like that handguard

[SteveL]

I'm just cross-posting some pics in case anyone's interested in seeing what the FDE NSR panels from Noveske look like.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[SteveL]

So now that I've had this rifle put together for about two years, I'm finally getting off my butt and going to a carbine class with it this coming weekend. Here is how it currently sits. I'm very curious to see if I'm going to find anything about it I don't like after running the class.