HELP AR180B broke in half!!

I just called Wolverine supplies, there going to call me back and let me know what they can do, they are very nice to deal with and I would like to thanks all of you for the help and i'll post news as I get it.

I believe the guy at Wolverine was Randy and he was very helpful.
 
Wolverine will have to send pics to armalite to see if they will replace.

This was a problem when the first 180Bs first came out in the US, but don't hear about it much now. The replacement lower I got had the beefed up pivot pin holes.
 
hr said:
i guess it would be nice if they could incorporate some kinda steel sleeve to beef up the hole
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Or just take care of your rifle. I haven't had any problems and I've got all sorts of #### handing off my upper.
 
unfortunate.

The polymer has the strength - except against the lever force of the upper swinging open. this is documented. Armalite states this as the force is a result of physics and not the engineering factors of keeping the rifle together under use in firing.

When I release the upper its as though I am performing brain surgery, I am VERY careful the upper never gets close to the lower. I expect your rifle has not been so gingerly handled in the past and has probably slammed a few times.

I am interested in how a second hand 180B gets warranty attention on an item specifically stated not to be warrantied is handled by Wolverine. - I hope the best for you as one day this may happen to me.

I suspect your rifle took a couple hard slams to weaken the points... under regular use I can't see the upper separating from the lower without previous stressing of the polymer...(knock knocK)

btw is there a code in the serial num telling the year of mfg?

fed
 
This is the second occurrence of this problem which I have heard about. I personally know the owner of an identical rifle which he purchased new and had exactly the same failure after less than ten rounds fired. This happened about eight months ago.
 
Armedsask said:
Or just take care of your rifle. I haven't had any problems and I've got all sorts of #### handing off my upper.
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Nonsense the rifle should be made to handle the upper swinging open on the take down pin end of story. I've never heard of this happening on a mil spec wpn? Oh that's right....... :rolleyes:
 
Armalite should just dump the garbage plastic lower and make a damn stamped one....or even cast alloy. Plastic furniture is OK, plastic major components like receivers is out to lunch.......
 
Hitzy said:
Plastic furniture is OK, plastic major components like receivers is out to lunch.......
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Yeah, that's why wide-body jets fall out of the sky all the time, and Glocks only last a couple of thousand rounds.

There's nothing wrong with plastic, especially the reinforced-fibre kind, the designers just have to know how to work with it. Using it in a limited-cross-section area like in the pictures is questionable.
 
acrashb said:
Yeah, that's why wide-body jets fall out of the sky all the time, and Glocks only last a couple of thousand rounds.

There's nothing wrong with plastic, especially the reinforced-fibre kind, the designers just have to know how to work with it. Using it in a limited-cross-section area like in the pictures is questionable.
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The only reason plastic is used for gun frames like glocks, AR180B's, XD's etc. is cost savings in manufacture. It's not used because it's stronger or more durable, and the weight savings over conventional alloys is a not even worth mentioning.
It's a cheap way to make guns, and it shows........plastic just doesn't scream "quality" to me......:rolleyes:
 
I suggest the owner take the discussion to the AR180 forum at AR15.com. If this is an issue with AR180's then there should be tons of explanation and advice there, given the much larger number of users.
 
Hitzy said:
plastic just doesn't scream "quality" to me......:rolleyes:
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Then that's the core of the issue, and I agree. I like a nice stainless matt finish, or black anodized Al. However, plastic guns can work just fine if there is enough beef in the right areas - like a Glock, which I personally despise, and apparently unlike the AR180B.

There are plenty of all-metal guns that scream "cheap". Examples are left as an exercise for the reader.
 
Plastics can stop a bullet. Could be a processing problem when they manufactured the part. If it's a part that's prone to breakage under heavy use then a flawwed part would have less resilience. Plastics should stretch + give, this is where they derive their strength. If it's brittle it's a processing problem. I have a love/hate relationship with injection moulding.
 
deanml said:
Plastics can stop a bullet. Could be a processing problem when they manufactured the part. If it's a part that's prone to breakage under heavy use then a flawwed part would have less resilience. Plastics should stretch + give, this is where they derive their strength. If it's brittle it's a processing problem. I have a love/hate relationship with injection moulding.
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WTF??? Do you have ANY idea what you're saying?

Stopping a bullet and having high cross-sectional tensile strength are NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL.

Also, the plastic in question is chemically hardened so that it DOESN'T stretch. You don't want your pin holes stretching!!! Especially if you don;t want K-Bang! to happen alot and your customers to sue you... :eek:
 
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