I bought a new AR-556 because of the raving reviews. I saw many reviews where they pulled the rifle from the box, loaded it, and successfully ran hundreds of rounds through it.
Not me. I cleaned mine thoroughly first. Mind you, I've owned MANY semi-auto rifles (but never an AR-15) and haven't had issues. First 20-30 rounds ran fine, though I noticed the last shot hold open was not working. This was on the pmag that came with it, as well as another brand. In both cases, if I manually pull the handle back, the empty magazine will correctly cause it to hold open.
After 30 rounds or so, it began failing to feed. Ejection never failed, but it was denting the side of the round and jamming up bad when trying to load the next round. That was happening every 3-5 rounds, and soon it began missing the subsequent round entirely and almost every time. It would just eject and then load nothing at all.
A guy who worked at the range looked at it and thought maybe I put too much lube on the bolt (not the BCG, just the bolt itself). He cleaned it up and then it worked fine for the final ~30 rounds I shot. I don't really put a lot of oil on my guns and this has never been an issue. Are AR's that hard to keep happy? I doubt it. Plus, all those reviews where people didn't even clean the factory grease off of it.
Any experiences like this?
Not me. I cleaned mine thoroughly first. Mind you, I've owned MANY semi-auto rifles (but never an AR-15) and haven't had issues. First 20-30 rounds ran fine, though I noticed the last shot hold open was not working. This was on the pmag that came with it, as well as another brand. In both cases, if I manually pull the handle back, the empty magazine will correctly cause it to hold open.
After 30 rounds or so, it began failing to feed. Ejection never failed, but it was denting the side of the round and jamming up bad when trying to load the next round. That was happening every 3-5 rounds, and soon it began missing the subsequent round entirely and almost every time. It would just eject and then load nothing at all.
A guy who worked at the range looked at it and thought maybe I put too much lube on the bolt (not the BCG, just the bolt itself). He cleaned it up and then it worked fine for the final ~30 rounds I shot. I don't really put a lot of oil on my guns and this has never been an issue. Are AR's that hard to keep happy? I doubt it. Plus, all those reviews where people didn't even clean the factory grease off of it.
Any experiences like this?