|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I just checked and you are right - about 3.75 inches for both.
Yep, anymore travel than that, and the carrier key would break the lower receiver when it hit the buffer tube mounting point. The supposed reason the A5 works better than the carbine system is because of the rifle spring/heavier buffer combination. I don't completely understand the engineering involved, but the softer spring/heavier buffer seems to work better than the lighter buffer/heavier spring combination. It doesn't seem like it should, but it appears to work that way. Either combination of parts should be having to work against the same amount of pressure, generated by the firing cartridge, but evidently not. I suppose we're getting into dwell, timing, and probably some other factors, now. Someone with an engineering background would have to take over from here.
Last edited by M90A1; 01-02-12 at 20:51.
If the rifle buffer is over 5 oz, and the rifle and carbine buffer have the exact same travel - why does the carbine and H buffer even exist? Why would anyone use anything less than an H2 buffer (and whatever gas port was needed to make it work at the correct cyclic rate)?
It seems like the entire problem with the carbine buffer all along was that it was not an H2 buffer from the start.
There are a few things about the CAR extension that don't make sense to me.
Do you know the inside depth of the tubes?
Also, if you get a chance can you see what the dims are at the locations marked? I don't have a rifle buffer or extension or any A5 parts at the moment. I suspect the OAL's between them, at a glance, might not be as far apart as mentioned here.
![]()
The carbine and rifle spring, when installed in their respective tubes, both provide 5.8 lbs of force and go up to about 11 lbs of force.
Normally I would think the carbine spring would be stressed more, but I calculated the stress in both, and they were both fine and within normal limits.
I can think of no reason why the rifle buffer system would be any different than a carbine buffer system that uses an H2 buffer.
It seems like what gave the carbine system the bad rap was the carbine buffer and H buffer - which, in 5.56mm at least, seem to have no reason to exist except to save money on Tungsten.
Basically, the rifle buffer has low-cost steel weights, so someone put steel weights in the carbine buffer, and that is how we got the C buffer.
So if you want to upgrade your carbine, I would use an H2 buffer - and then measure the cyclic rate on a FA lower, and enlarge the gas port if necessary to achieve 800-825 rpm (while using a normal spring).
Bookmarks