There are some little quirks with the ACR.
I broke the clip that holds the pistol grip compartment in the grip. It just snapped off while trying to figure out why it wouldn't stay locked in place. It's not fit properly, the dimensions for are off somewhere. Others have reported a similar issue on AR15.com with their storage compartments.
Then there's the little rubber o-ring that holds the firing pin retainer pin in place. It doesn't fit right, either. Others report this problem with their rifles on the Bushmaster forums on AR15.com as well. You basically have to use a hammer to pound it in to seat so it won't prevent you from reassembling your rifle. Here's what the pin looks like with the o-ring mounted and in the carrier. When it's like this, you rarely can reassemble the rifle as the carrier won't fit into its rails.
Here's the culprit.
Once you remove the o-ring...
The retainer pin fits below flush and the rifle can be easily assembled.
The owners manual says it's safe to fire the rifle without the o-ring but it says to replace it if its damaged or missing. I'm not sure if I will start to see damage to the pin or pin hole with the o-ring removed.
The sling mount points just leave you scratching your head. I love the idea of quick detach mounting points on the rifle. But their location and the fact one point doesn't have the quick detach but instead uses a traditional loop mounting point makes you wonder what the engineers at BM were thinking.
Here's the single loop mounting point, and probably the point that most users would want to use at some point.
The sling mounting point on the rear of the stock only exists on the left side of the rifle. What you would think is a mounting point on the right side of the butt stock isn't, it's just a screw hole holing the mount for the left side of the rifle.
If you fold the stock and have your sling attached to this rearward point on the butt stock, you can't use the sling anymore as the stock doesn't lock in the folded position. I will either snap back open as you walk around or the rifle will flop around with the muzzle wanting to point up in the air. Here's what it looks like with the sling mounted to both forward mounting points with the stock folded.
Keep in mind the stock doesn't lock in the folded position... strange.
The gas regulator is marked U and S. This stands for "Suppressed" and "Unsupressed". If you move it to the "Suppressed" setting, it basically turns the gas completely off as there's no hole in the regulator for this setting. There's nothing in between. On the SCAR you have high and low cycle so you can adjust your gas system for different types of ammo and conditions (like if the rifle is dirty). Not so with the ACR. There is another regulator I've seen floating around that's marked "H" and "L" but you have to call up Bushmaster and tell them you're having problems with your rifle cycling 5.56mm ammo before they'll send it to you. The H stands for "high pressure" or 5.56mm ammo, and the L stands for "low pressure" or .223 ammo.
The last thing that I find odd is the selector lever. For me, the ambi-lever is located in a bad position. Even though it's a relatively small lever, I always hit my index/firing finger when trying to disengage the safety to fire. Once it's disengaged, my index finger rides on top of the bottom end of the lever which becomes uncomfortable during extended shooting as the lever digs into your finger.
I'll cover these quirks in a future installment video, but I thought I would share them with you guys before I have a chance to put that video together.
