By a large margin.
To the OP. I would buy the stock rifle and invest the other funds in reloading gear and top components and do plenty of load development.
Most of these "upgrades" are useless. My personal opinion.
Just pull your trigger group out,select a suitable movie or three, for out of season work F.M.J and Blackhawk Down yield excellent results. Grab a couple of brews, arrange seat for maximum comfort and ignore the wife for a few hours.
Basically what you do is cup the trigger group in your hand and dry fire the bugger about sixteen thousand times, with your thumb over the hammer so your not subjecting any parts to repeated shock.It is a really easy and effective way to smooth out your trigger. When you get to one of Barneys clinics you will see it done.
When you get 12 or 20 guys all doing it at once it sounds like the 101st Airborne sneaking around Normandy
You WILL trap your thumb, but the blood blister is the mark of a man.
Just kidding about the sixteen thousand............you'll feel the trigger smooth out as you progress and theres no nasty filing away metal and possibly screwing it up.
Have fun, but keep the band aid handy![]()
Even better when using this method smear a bit of polishing compound on the sear ect. Goes a long way to speed up the process.
One last thing...Is that 1000 in upgrades or 1000 including cost of rifle?
NM spring guide rod
Non chinese muzzle device
Non chinese front sight
Non chinese rear sight
Good quality mags
a trigger job
Unitized gas system
And the rest on ammo![]()
One last thing...
Be ware of the snake oil sales man when it comes to accurac'zing or scoping this rifle.
Thomas has pretty much summed up my idea on these rifles and what I have done over last three years.
2009 M14S(449), National Match flash hider(50), NM spring guide(37), spring(10), shimmed(5?), Garand rear sight(80), Krylon olive drab fusion to cover that ugly black stock(8) Hungry hockey night in Canada trigger job(0),..priceless and it works.. Total 639 and done over three years so no one injured in the process. So I guess I could almost put 1000 762 from Can am in there as well, break that thing in over iron sights.
Remember, all the tiny upgrades I did were not necessary out of the box to enjoy this rifle,..just throwing a few things on as time passes to keep interest up.
For future,.. a Boyds or USGI walnut would be in my sights just because I like wood, or even a USGI fiberglass(painted olive drab of course it suits this rifle big time) stock would definitely be an upgrade from the plastic chinese one.![]()