Reliable AR15?

[Grizz]

Hi everyone, I was wondering how the AR's are on reliability these days? I'm pretty much an AK guy but my pops was in the marines 30 years ago and always talks about how those things jammed up. He was very good with one but those things just kept jamming and he grew to hate them only for that reason. I'm wondering if they make them anymore reliable than they used to be? We were just talking about it recently and I'd love to find him an AR15 if they actually make them reliable. I know when I squeeze my AK trigger it will go boom, can I say the same for an AR? I don't hear much talk about their bad reliability too much now a days, so whats the deal here?

[gdmoody]

I don't know how every one else feels about them, but I find the three that I actively shoot to be completely reliable. I have had problems with the one that has a gas piston system, but that was my fault, and not the gun itself. I had the gas piston in backwards and it was an expensive single shot rifle until I figured out what I did wrong.

I would venture to say that 90% of the problems with any given AR is one of three things. They are (1) the magazine, (2) the ammo, and (3) the gas system.

1. If the feed lips on the magazine are not right, you are going to have feed problems.

2 & 3. Under powered ammo will cause cycling problems as will a loose gas key on the bolt carrier. It must be properly staked and the O rings in good shape.

[cpttango30]

I spend 8 years in the army. Five of those years were in a unit that supported 1st Cav. a heavy Engineer unit. I ran buldozers. I never had a singe M-16 malfunction on me. ever. That is from the day I fired my first round in basic to the last time I qualified before I got out.

I did three trips to NTC at Fort Irwin. The sand is very fine there and just gets everywhere (Its hell on buttcracks). If you took care of your weapon it ran just fine.

Fast forward to 3 yers ago when I bought my first AR-15 a RRA Predator Pursuit Rifle. That rifle has been nothing but a flat out shooting rock since the day I got it.

In the beginning not many knew how to properly take care of them and the Jungle didn't help them any.

[Zhurh]

I have a half dozen AR's from my Colt pre ban A2 I bought in 1980's, Stags in 556 & 6.8, Armalite 338 Fed that killed 3 moose & a bunch of caribou last fall, and no joke; I'm going to have a SCAR-H 308 before this upcoming election. You'll flawlessly get thousands upon thousands of rounds through all of them, but if you shoot 200-300 rounds 5-6 times out having fun and don't clean out the carbon & dirt; you'll eventually have problems. Not that finicky of a gun in reality.

My dream gun? An AR with collapsible stock, 16 inch barrel, weighs no more than 7 lb, and in a magnum caliber for hunting. Dreams.

[Snakedriver]

Back when I was a soldier I had a Colt XM177 CAR-15 that I carried as my personal firearm in the cockpit of my Cobra in Vietnam and it was an awesome rifle. It was very reliable and accurate.

After I got out of the Army I resisted the urge to get an AR, preferring to stay with the conventional type rifles, so I got a Ruger Mini-14 that I have been very satisfied with for many years. It's very fun to shoot and has been 100% reliable. I can't remember it have any kind of failure at all.

Recently, I softened my views on things and decided to get an AR-15 type rifle in 5.56mm caliber to augment my firearms collection. However, due the sad state of the economy I was on a very tight budget, but wanted to get as good of a rifle as I could for my money.

After doing my research, I decided to get a Rock River Arms (RRA) 16" mid-length upper and mate it with an Armalite lower I assembled using all RRA internal parts. I topped it off with a RRA scope mount and a CenterPoint 2-7X32 mil-dot scope. All-in I came in at around the $900 mark.

It's been 100% reliable and is extremely accurate. I'm happy with it and would recommend RRA to anyone looking for a good AR-15 on a budget.

Here's a couple of pictures:

[Brass Tacks]

It appears the problems of the early releases of the M16 still haunts the AR platform.

To have introduced an unproven platform into a theater of war to me is criminal, thank you Robert S. McNamara.[/RANT]

I cannot remember my M16A1 ever having a stoppage, and I put a boat load of rounds thru it. I did keep it clean!! I've had a S&W M&P-15 for several years and haven't regretted the purchase at all. Functions perfectly

[CampingJosh]

My self-built AR hasn't had a malfunction in the 10 months since I finished it. It's only slightly less reliable than an anvil.

[permafrost]

When they first started using them, they were claimed to be "self-cleaning" because of the gas impingement. (Go figure!) They were first issued in Vietnam without cleaning kits! Naturally it wasn't long before they started jamming and becoming unreliable. The Army had to send cleaning kits and put out a special training film to teach the troops how to clean the weapon. From then on the troops were required to clean them well and often. The failure and jamming rate came down rapidly, but the rumour about them being unreliable was already out there and hard to over come as witnessed by your Dad's attitude to this day.

[jlloyd73]

I would bet my life on mine...............it always goes bang and I built it myself.