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breaking in? WTF are they talking about?

1K views 10 replies 7 participants last post by  Coils 
#1 ·
i sometimes see a comment over at the mall-ninja AR15/M4 boards that goes like this.


X-brand of gold plated mall-ninja weapon brand new out of the box is short stroking,FTF, double feed ect ect-- and the guy that owns this device is well pissed because he spent $$$$ of dough and the damn thing and it won't run, or won't run with steel cased ammo and so on.

outside of the usual user error i sometimes see the comment "well fire a few hunderd/500 /1,000 rounds and after it is broken in the problem should go away!"

now granted on some of my AK builds they did need a few rounds to loosen up and start running on some of the builds. but most of the time they didn't. and by few rounds i mean one mag or less.

i can't say i am some kind of AR-15 guru but over the few years i have assembled a number of these weapons and nearly every damned one of them ran right out the door. with the exception of one LMT upper which had a metal fragment lodged in the gas vent on the barrel and no amount of ammo would have dislodged the metal shrad lodged in the port. after a few rounds i knew there was something wrong with the upper and by a quick process of elimination i ended up removing the gas tube/FS base and then peering down the gas port on the barrel.



the question of the day is this? you folks ever see a new AR type that needed a "breaking period of 100 or more rounds" where there was nothing reallywrong with the weapon??
 
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#3 ·
If they don't function correctly by the end of a 30 round mag then there's a problem. I have had a couple uppers that the front sight base or the gas key didn't form a good seal and it took a few more rounds to seal it off before it ran good. Heck I had a buddy that was having an occasional short stroke on his gun and after I broke it down to look at it I found that he had forgot to put on one of the gas rings when he put it together.
 
#4 ·
I guess I've been fortunate so far. I've always used DPMS or Rock River (labeled) parts though. After parts started drying up I did buy 2 LPKs from Model1 at a show. One of the trigger/ disconnectors would NOT install in one of the lowers we were assembling.
The set from the other kit dropped in perfectly. And the trigger that wouldnt fit, dropped right into a different lower and works fine. Go figure.?.
 
#9 ·
on one of my builds last year i had a CMMG lower parts kit which i installed in a double-star lower. everything worked fine except the trigger felt like it was made of rocks. horrible hard gritty pull. i swapped the hammer for a old old colt i had laying around and now it is super smooth.

ironically i put the same gritty CMMG hammer in my cav-arms plastic lower along with a armalite trigger and it works very well. not quite as smooth as the colt hammer but much-much better than it did in the double star with the all-CMMG parts.

sometimes it is really nice to have a few spare parts to swap around.
 
#6 ·
I have had a few that needed a little work on the trigger, or hammer, etc. What I consider "normal" fitting of factory new components. I have even had to work on a few parts when switching lowers around. A recent one is a kit from Blackthorne ( Yup, I know)..where the bolt really locks into the extension. But I agree, 30 rounds or less should do the trick. Although, if JRS is reading this, we may need to go higher than 30 rounds. But that is ONLY because Murphy has such a hard-on for Marines.
 
#8 ·
Breaking in..

The last M-16 I owned, Govt. issue, the Sargent handed it to me and then took it back.
Stuck a 20 round mag in there, went full auto into the air and said, "Here this one works good luck trooper." :w00t1:
 
#10 ·
A long time ago my Army ordnance section chief showed me how to make issue M-16 parts work. You swap them around with other rifles until they function. That's called. "selective fitting" and is an approved proceedure in the Army.

The chief was a real small arms expert and a great shooter. He also knew I liked hanging around with his section to learn gun stuff. As the CO I made sure that his section received the needed parts, budget money, ammo (for competition), and pubs. Funds got tight after Vietnam but we did have plently of left-over ammo.

VD
 
#11 ·
I forget what brand the one guy at the range has, but it wouldn't feed Wolf when he bought it and after about 300 rounds of brass it fed the Wolf fine.

Another one was a Bush Master, friends father got it new, it was short stroking with every brand of ammo and everyone told him the same thing about "running a few hundred rounds through it". Now to me that is a stupid answer to that situation when the damn thing didn't function in the first place, oh and that was info from ARF so go figure. He ended up installing a softer recoil spring to get it to function, after a while and at least 500 rounds he tried the original spring again, and it short stroked like it did before.


the question of the day is this? you folks ever see a new AR type that needed a "breaking period of 100 or more rounds" where there was nothing reallywrong with the weapon??
So yes I've seen one that needed to be ran a little to be able to use Wolf. And another that just had a problem that nothing but replacing parts would fix.
To me the AR is a good platform in design but I really don't care for them and don't think they are as great as a lot of people make them out to be. My $.02
 
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