Anyone got a high mileage AR with visible wear on components?
I pulled apart my test mule last night to show a newbie how to strip and clean an AR and was a bit surprised at some of the wear pattern I discovered. As an abused test mule this rifle hardly ever gets cleaned and even then only enough to keep running. It has suffered a life of massive amounts of rounds in a short time, much of that wearing one test can or another. It has been seriously overheated a number of times to the point I was worried the gas tube would explode.
What I found that I had not expected was a lot of wear on the bottom side of the buffer tube. This is a DI rifle and so should not suffer from carrier tilt, yet the bottom portion of the buffer tube has been worn down to bare aluminum while the top side still has its black anodized surface. The wear pattern extends quite a long way down the buffer tube.
The other thing I noticed is that the spring did not tightly fit the buffer. I'm not sure if it did originally (the rifle was assembled a number of years ago) but everyone I have ever done seemed to fit quite tightly. I would need to measure the spring and buffer to see which one has changed in dimension.
Playing with the BCG I noticed that the bolt moved in the carrier quite easily, easier than I remember. Pulling the bolt I discovered one of the gas rings had broken. Other than that the BCG seems fine.
The barrel and in particular the gas port has seen better days. This pic was taken through a borescope and shows the extreme wear the port has suffered. It looks like a water slide and the wear and pitting extends quite a ways forward along the rifling. For the intended purpose of this rifle I don't care about accuracy, only that it goes bang and the bullet leaves the barrel point forward so I haven't bothered to see the effects on accuracy.
I pulled apart my test mule last night to show a newbie how to strip and clean an AR and was a bit surprised at some of the wear pattern I discovered. As an abused test mule this rifle hardly ever gets cleaned and even then only enough to keep running. It has suffered a life of massive amounts of rounds in a short time, much of that wearing one test can or another. It has been seriously overheated a number of times to the point I was worried the gas tube would explode.
What I found that I had not expected was a lot of wear on the bottom side of the buffer tube. This is a DI rifle and so should not suffer from carrier tilt, yet the bottom portion of the buffer tube has been worn down to bare aluminum while the top side still has its black anodized surface. The wear pattern extends quite a long way down the buffer tube.
The other thing I noticed is that the spring did not tightly fit the buffer. I'm not sure if it did originally (the rifle was assembled a number of years ago) but everyone I have ever done seemed to fit quite tightly. I would need to measure the spring and buffer to see which one has changed in dimension.
Playing with the BCG I noticed that the bolt moved in the carrier quite easily, easier than I remember. Pulling the bolt I discovered one of the gas rings had broken. Other than that the BCG seems fine.
The barrel and in particular the gas port has seen better days. This pic was taken through a borescope and shows the extreme wear the port has suffered. It looks like a water slide and the wear and pitting extends quite a ways forward along the rifling. For the intended purpose of this rifle I don't care about accuracy, only that it goes bang and the bullet leaves the barrel point forward so I haven't bothered to see the effects on accuracy.
