High mileage RFB

[sixgunner357]

I’m currently just over 3500 rounds of Norinco surplus plus roughly 500 rounds of Hirtenberger and Barnaul. It hasn’t been trouble free which I’m not holding against it, so far the firing pin broke and was replaced, then the Carrier Channel Weldment (#320) had a weld break where the charging handle goes through and a small sheet metal part came off. Around the same time I noticed I had to keep increasing the gas to get the gun to run, I thought this may have been due to the Carrier Channel Weldment part but after replacing the broken part with a new one the problem continued. The rifle then wouldn’t even cycle the action more than an inch so I stripped it down and found that the bottom third of the Gas Head (#160) had blown apart! Another part was ordered and installed and I’d like to say it was a simple fix but it wasn’t, I removed the Gas Adjust nut and punched out the roll pin that was holding the Gas Head in and thought it would just tap out. This part removal required heating the Gas Block up in order to pound out the Gas Head and putting the new one in required heating the Gas Block and cooling the Gas Head. Once the parts were tapped into place there was no time to adjust as it immediately stuck in place. The only difference that I saw was that the new Gas Head had no groove to allow the roll pin to be put back to stop it from rotating but with how tight it went together I don’t foresee this being an issue.
I have no idea if anyone else has had a Gas Head fail before or not but I only have one kind of luck, the gun is now back together and working perfectly and I’m still very happy with it and am not putting this here to discredit the rifle as anything mechanical can and will break.
As for optics I’m running a Holosun HE510C green dot with a Vortex micro 3x magnifier and feel that for what I use this rifle for it’s a great combination. I’d love to hear from more people good or bad that have put a decent number of rounds through their RFB, have you had anything break, are you happy with the performance of your rifle?

 

[xdmer]

I have two, carbine and hunter, a few hundred rounds through the carbine, mostly quality ammo, less through the hunter. I've had one firing pin break on the carbine, most likely due to a fair amount of dry fire without snap caps.

I have a holosun 403B red dot on the carbine (that I've mostly used in the bush for hunting) and PA SLx 3-18x BPR Mil on the hunter (that I've mostly used in the bush for longer range target shooting).

I have similar setup on RDB's , with either red dot or x3 prism optic on one, and 2-12x Athlon BTRS Mil, on the other, both have been taken out hunting and light target use, but not high round counts, a few hundred.

I really like them for what they are, better quality ammo gets very good accuracy, especially the RFB's. I'm happy with their performance. Historically I was not happy with gen 1 SU16FX or gen 1 Sub2000.

 

[SpruceBug]

I got mine maybe a few months ago. I've put 800 rounds through it so far and I've had feeding issues with the magazines for the first 200. Whenever I loaded the mag straight up by grabbing the body of the magazine, I got issues where the charging handle wouldn't chamber the round and gets hung up and pinch the cartridge inside the receiver. The bolt didn't strip the cartridge all the way, seems like it slid over it. I resolved this by using snap caps in magazines and trying different methods, grabbing the magazines by the bottom and rocking it into place, forwards to back, I've had no issues thus far since loading it this way. I think the problem was seating the magazines properly. Can't be gentle with my rifle it seems, any timid actions and it just refuses to work. It's almost as if the more frustrated I get, the better it works, so now i just treat it like #### and had literally zero issues. Also had to adjust the gas vent a few clicks tighter as I've been shooting more. This is all with reloaded ammunition 42gr of IMR 4064 with 168gr Speer BTHP. I'm conserving my remaining primers for hunting and load dev and going to try and buy some Norinco 308 Win to take to the range.

Any further issues ill post an update but overall, i'm actually quite impressed with mine considering the power of 308. The money I saved from not buying a Tav7 went into the kydex stock cover, bottom handguard rail, scope mount, and a strike eagle 1-6. Would like a longer LOP but otherwise, I love it.