Daniel defense vs colt canada

John Deer

John Deer

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Trying to choose a complete upper for my first AR build.

I'm looking for a complete upper.

Either Daniel defense m4v5 16" barrel. Or colt canada IUR 15.7" barrel.

Both are about the same price, both cold hammer forged


It will be my first AR and I will be using it at close range, most likely 150-200 yards max distance. I will not be mounting any flashlights and will probably want to stick with iron sights. Potentially a red dot at most. I would like to get into action shooting at some point and am considering 3 gun.


Thoughts?
 
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Both are great. Of course, the CC is Canadian.

That said, I use the IUR at work, and they're quite heavy. That, and you can't change barrels without specialized tools.

For those reasons I would buy the DD.
 
^Phat Eagle makes some good points and as much as I like DD products (own a DDM4V7) I really think the CC products particularly the IUR's are about as good as it gets for an AR upper/barrel, plus I really like the C9A2 enhanced flash suppressor that comes on the CC IUR's.

I'll be selling my DD to fund a CC 11" or 14.5" C8IUR rifle once CC makes them available (hopefully sooner then later).

The best thing is you really can't go wrong with either choice, as there both top quality kit worthy of a lifetime of shooting.

I'd go with your gut feelings as you probably won't notice any appreciable difference between the two (save for a few slight differences like stated in the above post).

That is unless you will be competing and training; discharging tens of thousands of rounds and in that case I'd give the edge to CC, but that's just my opinion as a non-expert on the topic.
One other thing would be that the CC product would likely have faster access to warranty if in the rare chance either actually needed it.

Just my .02.

Cheers D
 
DD all day long, the CC's are excellent rifles and manufactured to NATO standards but the DD comes across at a price point with way more options in their line up. Both rifles will run great, i'm just not a fan of the price point that the CC's carry with only standard furniture and handgaurds.
 
Non-phixion said:
DD all day long, the CC's are excellent rifles and manufactured to NATO standards but the DD comes across at a price point with way more options in their line up. Both rifles will run great, i'm just not a fan of the price point that the CC's carry with only standard furniture and handgaurds.
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What exactly does that mean? Excuse my ignorance but what is the difference between "mil spec" the Daniel defense claims and the "NATO standards" colt canada claims?


Also you mention way more options for the price. Which options exactly?
 
The M4V5 is a 7lbish gun with a 12" FF handguard and the midlength gas system. It has a government profiled barrel.

The IUR with a lower is a tad over 8lb with a 9" integrated handguard and its own proprietary carbine gas tube system. It has pretty much a heavy barrel.

You can take apart a DD upper at home with tools from DD and a regular receiver block, but not with a CC IUR.

You need to figure your priority and what you use it for.

If you want a faster gun for action shooting, softer midlength gas system recoil and the ability to pull it apart at home, DD is a better choice. A long handguard also gives your less "shadow" if you are mounting a white light.

If you want a stable gun to pour down a lot of fire and shoot at the more conventional bullseye type competitions like Service Rifle, the IUR will give you the advantage of a heavy barrel.
 
hey all,

thanks for the info!

Greentips you made a good point. I should specify my priority and what i will be using it for.
I should have done it in the first post but i will do it now.

It will be my first AR and I will be using it at close range, most likely 150-200 yards max distance.

Some might suggest to go with Norinco etc. for my first AR till I figure things out a bit more but i would rather purchase high end once and never look back, I plan to keep this AR for the rest of my life.

I will not be mounting any flashlights and will probably want to stick with iron sights. Potentially a red dot at most.

Does the extra 3" of forward rail space make the daniel defense a better choice for iron sights? will the daniel defense be more accurate because of the longer rail and longer sight distance?

I would like to get into action shooting at some point and am considering 3 gun.

I understand the obvious drawback of an extra 1 pound of weight on the colt but what are the advantages to it? what benefit does a heavy barrel provide?
 
You should hunt out the CC thread on this site. It goes into details about the CC barrel. In a nut shell it's supposed to last MUCH longer. Mine is the most accurate of my ARs.
They are also built with a slight "choke" towards the end of the barrel which is supposed to do many great things. Again see the CC thread for details.
The only other AR that I know of that has that built in choke come with an HK 416 and I recently saw a used one at a vendor go for around 8K.
So for longevity it would seem the CC is the way to go. But depending on how much shooting you do that may not be necessary anyways for you.
 
The so-called "chokes" in CHF barrels are common to all CHF barrels made by GFM radial forging. It is a byproduct of the CHF process to have one end of the barrel blank slightly reduced in the bore diameter.

I have my opinion about whether the constricted area is really necessary, because the most accurate match barrels don't intentionally put constricted bores at the muzzle ends. The reason HK , CC and FN ( in their Minimis ) have this choke is just that they hammer the same length of barrels all the time. It is more efficient to put the right size of blanks into the forger than doing additional cutting afterwards.

So naturally if DD hammers tens of thousands of 16" bbls, they will all have the same constricted inner bores because it is the most efficient way of doing things. Afterall, they probably all use the same GFM radial forgers and the same technology.
 
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Or not at all.

There are lots of differences outside of your assumptions such as how the chambers are formed.


greentips said:
The so-called "chokes" in CHF barrels are common to all CHF barrels made by GFM radial forging. It is a byproduct of the CHF process to have one end of the barrel blank slightly reduced in the bore diameter.

I have my opinion about whether the constricted area is really necessary, because the most accurate match barrels don't intentionally put constricted bores at the muzzle ends. The reason HK , CC and FN ( in their Minimis ) have this choke is just that they hammer the same length of barrels all the time. It is more efficient to put the right size of blanks into the forger than doing additional cutting afterwards.

So naturally if DD hammers tens of thousands of 16" bbls, they will all have the same constricted inner bores because it is the most efficient way of doing things. Afterall, they probably all use the same GFM radial forgers and the same technology.
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andrew3081 said:
Extra rail on the DD will be better for accuracy if u are going to use iron sights. If you are going to use an optic, the extra rail does not help.
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Not enough to be noticeable, yet another gimmick sold to people. Adding an inch, two, three, four, hell even five inches of "sight radius" is indistinguishable to the human eye. The difference is in the perceived size of the front post, more specifically in relation to the rear aperture. If you use a skinny front sight post then you have a lot of space around it when viewed through the rear sight/aperture. This is very similar to using the 0-200 large diameter aperture common on many rear sight assemblies. When we want to be more precise what do we do? We flip the aperture from the large one to the small one. This reduces the size of the aperture which means the front sight post fills more of the space you see within the rear aperture. We do this because the human eye can distinguish the minute differences between the spaces on both sides of the front sight post much easier when the distance or "gaps" are smaller. With the large aperture your eye does a good job of finding the centre and aligning the front sight post with it, but it cannot see the minute variations like those apparent when using the small aperture. You and your rifle are therefore less precise/consistent. The advantage to the large aperture is the speed in which your eye can find the centre(almost perfectly) and tell the brain that the sights are "aligned". The large aperture offers a larger margin of error for your eye which translates into faster times on target. The price for this speed comes in accuracy or more appropriately the precision and consistency. We are talking about a service rifle so "minute of man" is more than acceptable and even the large aperture is capable of this and more.

Now you can either change the size of the aperture, change the size of the front sight post, or adjust the distance between front and rear sights. The front sight post we like and want it small, so we won't change that(for a larger one that is). Changing the aperture or moving the front sight post has the same net effect, it either increases or decreases the gap around the front sight post when viewed through the rear aperture. As discussed above, a smaller aperture, or a more "full" aperture means we can be more precise/consistent. So having a shorter sight radius mimics having a smaller aperture. That is if you can even see the difference.

Your iron sights much like an optic are bolted onto the same plane as the barrel. Iron sights are always properly aligned(assuming they're properly zeroed), they're bolted on! What changes is how you/I/we see the relationship between the front and rear sight(sight alignment) and how we see that relationship transposed onto the target(sight picture). Lots of people talk about "sight radius" but never mention it when a reddot or magnified optic is being discussed, I wonder why? Oh yeah, that's because it makes absolutely no difference, both types of optics are also bolted to the same plane as the barrel. Their advantage comes in offering a single focal plane for your eye to focus on as opposed to two with irons; front sight focus and target focus,you can only do one at a time with irons. With optics the reticle appears to be projected down range onto the target, providing a single focal plane for your eye to focus on(target and reticle). Aside from this, there is no difference between the two sighting systems. Keeping your iron sights aligned(sight alignment) and keeping that aligned with the target(sight picture) is where all the error occurs. The sights themselves are never misaligned, you simply aren't looking at them from the proper angle. That proper angle is where the front and rear sight relationship corresponds to the barrel and translates into placing bullets on target as desired. Anything less than this proper angle and you're missing the target. Consistent head placement, eye relief from the rear sight, and front sight post placement on the target are all huge factors in the outcome of the shot. Let's not forget that your front sight post is a rather coarse aiming point and will never offer the fine aiming point of a reddot or magnified optic.

The difficulty in keeping your sight alignment and sight picture consistent has nothing to do with the sighting system, it is 100% how you the shooter see things that causes the hits or misses. Two focal planes, sight alignment and sight picture is a lot for your eyes and brain to process. The result is usually poor results with irons. And these poor results are often discounted as an error with the gun and not the shooter a common theme for people who don't know or understand the fundamentals of marksmanship. A common excuse is a "short sight radius" and it gets tossed around for both rifle and pistol shooters. Bottom line here, a change in sight radius from a carbine length AR to a mid length to a rifle length is not enough to be concerned about and not the reason you're missing shots when using the iron sights.

Matt K said:
Or not at all.

There are lots of differences outside of your assumptions such as how the chambers are formed.
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I've heard you mention these differences but have yet to see any published??

TW25B

ETA: The CC rifles are grossly over priced, stick with a DD and you'll have money left over for the important stuff, like ammo and training.
 
TW25B said:
TW25B

ETA: The CC rifles are grossly over priced, stick with a DD and you'll have money left over for the important stuff, like ammo and training.
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I'm not sure I would say "grossly over priced" $800 for the IUR seems to be a fairly competitive price when compared to DD uppers.



OP, both companies make some of the best rifles in the world. Honestly you cannot go wrong with either. One thing to keep in mind is you can always pickup a DD down the road, the IUR is slowly selling out and who knows when anything like it will next be available.
 
bongoz said:
I'm not sure I would say "grossly over priced" $800 for the IUR seems to be a fairly competitive price when compared to DD uppers.



OP, both companies make some of the best rifles in the world. Honestly you cannot go wrong with either. One thing to keep in mind is you can always pickup a DD down the road, the IUR is slowly selling out and who knows when anything like it will next be available.
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Funny how the UIR started at over a grand and now it's down to $800. Personally it offers nothing special. A monolithic upper is extremely limiting if you ever want to change anything. The small integral pieces of pic rail are next to useless and not removable, the days of fixed rails are long gone, or should be. Carbine length gas systems are over gassed and less than ideal. The inability to add rails or accessories as desired is yet another downfall. The integral QD sling sockets at the rear of the hand guard are useless for anyone who either doesn't mount their sling there or doesn't use QD swivels.

TW25B
 
I've got both a dd M4V5 and a CC C-8 IUR. You cant go wrong with either. And frankly for the average shooter the difference isnt that great for someone who isn't going to be putting much dodads on their rifle. I would just go for whatever you can get cheaper. Keep in mind that if you get the CC IUR, you might end up spending more money than you think on the lower. Especially if you don't get a complete lower. All those little pieces add up surprisingly fast. And you will need to get some special tools like an armorer's wrench and a bev block.
 
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