KSGM started a thread recently about downloading magazines because his rifle got dirty enough it didn't want to chamber on a fully loaded 30rd mag. Hrcjon mentioned maybe it was time for a thread on it here.

I recently brought home my first two rifle cans, one a reduced backpressure can, and one that is absolutely not, and is known to be gassy. Respectively, a Griffin Explorr 224, and an Otter Creek Polonium. Things have been hectic here, I haven't been able to get to the range with anything yet, so maybe it's a perfect opportunity to do some science. I have two 5.56 rifles currently equipped with muzzle devices I can mount a suppressor on. One is an 11.5" URGI clone with a stock gas system, a Spike's ST T2 buffer, and a Tubb's flatwire spring. The other is an 11" Bren 2 with the factory gas plug for now. So, the classic DI system we all know and love, and as gas piston setup. Basically the same barrel length, and I can shoot them both with the same suppressors.

The URGI has a nitrided carrier, but I also have a hard chromed carrier group I can drop into it for giggles. For now, I might skip that.

Anyways, that's the setup, and I'm thinking the testing may just be as simple as I give them both a thorough cleaning and a generous lube and then just shoot them until I get failures, noting the type, the round count with each, and with how many rounds through what can. I need to get to the range some time this week and zero both and confirm some things before I commence with this, but after that, I plan to do a fair bit of shooting in the coming months. I'm thinking I might limit maintenance to some Remoil squirted in the gas ports of the carrier for the URGI, and... I don't even know what on the Bren. May just leave it out of this test until I can get the gas plug to HBI to get the port machined. Magazines will all be loaded to full 30 or 20rd capacity, but really, it's the 30rd magazines we care about because 20's just always work anyway. I have a ten pack of NHMTG 30's I bought a few months ago I haven't even opened yet that I could use. I have a bunch of D&H, DSA, and Okay Surefeeds I can pick from as well, at least ten of each, that I can limit myself to if we want to eliminate Pmags from the testing since they don't have the fully loaded issues GI mags do.

For you guys who do lots of suppressed shooting with an AR, what kind of maintenance schedule do you follow? Do you clean it every thousand rounds? Once a year? Every range trip? How do you clean it? Do you run your AR's greased, oiled, or both? Typically, I rub a thin layer of white lithium grease on all the surfaces I can reach on the whole carrier group with extra on the bearing surfaces, I do the points in the trigger group Geissele recommends with their "Go Juice" and then I'll hit the gas ports in the carrier with some Remoil I keep in a little oiler in the grip compartment if I'm shooting a lot. That's about it.

For a while, I thought I had it figured out. I used a grease/oil mixture that had been recommended here on SIGforum. It worked great, on the build I happened to be using most at that time. It felt like that gun was unstoppable; it rarely needed cleaning, and it took a long time to "cook off" that lubrication mixture. After using a few other rifle and silencer compositions since then, I realize it was an anomaly.

Since then I have shifted toward slightly longer barrels, hosting cans with more backpressure, and I have steered away from a vented carrier. The magic oil/grease mix is no longer used. I go with regular oil; usually G96 (though that's not for any reason). I refresh the oil often, with special attention paid to the bolt lugs, as that's where it burns off first, when using a higher backpressure can.

I'd use the lower backpressure can on your piston gun, in order to maximize your cleanliness return. A piston gun will still get gross, when it's getting barfed-on from the bore upon extraction. Piston guns are usually a bit louder too, so that has you maximizing your sound performance on the DI with the Polonium. Your piston will be clean as can be, and your DI will be quiet (but keep the oil handy).

I don't follow any sort of cleaning regimen. I don't have anything against cleaning a gun, I just find it difficult to find big chunks of time to accommodate it. I have to pick away at it here and there, over the course of a few days, so the gun is out of the game for a while. An AR can run reliably in a state of unbelievable filth, so long as it's oil is kept up with. That being said, I go for quite a while between cleanings, and I wear rubber gloves when it's time.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KSGM,

quote:

I'd use the lower backpressure can on your piston gun, in order to maximize your cleanliness return.

Yeah, I had instinctively settled on this. With it being more less what it is and the AR being easier to tune with buffers and whatnot, it’s what made the most sense to me.

I've shot tens of thousands of rounds through suppressed ARs -- in personal practice, formal training, and competition. Through bolt actions, too. I've witnessed boat loads more suppressed rounds fired by others than I've fired. I've witnessed a bunch of AR failures to function. As I see it, the most common cause of failure is magazines and/or ammo. The next cause of failure is lack of cleaning and/or lube.

Frank Green of Bartlein barrels has stated that using a suppressor can reduce the effective life of a barrel by up to 50%. The wear rates are the highest for semi-autos, but still occurs with bolt action rifles. Suppressor use requires additional cleaning.

I clean my ARs pretty much every time they're shot. The only exception is if the round count is no more than 30 to 40, and I expect to shoot again in the next few days. Cleaning an AR takes me 15-20 minutes. Run wet patches down the bore, to where most of the carbon fouling is gone. Field strip the BCG -- wipe down the parts, then re-lube. Wipe down the inside of the upper receiver. Wipe down the lower receiver and assess the amount of carbon on the trigger assembly. Then function check.

******
The number of cycling failures I've seen in competition from dirty & under-lubed ARs is significant. There are dry, dusty, windy locations that are challenging to ARs -- including:
- The training facilities at Rifles Only, Kingsville, TX.
- The Blue Steel Ranch, New Mexico. Home to Competition Dynamics' Steel Safari and Team Safari matches.
- Douglas, Wyoming. Home to Competition Dynamics' Team Challenge matches.
- NRA Whittington Center, Raton, New Mexico. Home to multiple types of matches.
Where there's wind & dry conditions -- beware. For me, that's pretty much anywhere within a long day's drive.

Some folks say that's just competition and training BS. Real world defensive shooting (which occurs about once in a gazillion) is where reliability matters. So...I attended a 5-day Rifles Only advanced carbine class in northeastern Colorado one year. Dry, dusty, windy, hot weather. High round counts per day. The guest instructor was an Ohio SWAT team leader & instructor. At that time, he was responsible for providing dirt naps for 3 bad guys. All dozen students in our class were required to shoot suppressed rifles. Our SWAT instructor laid down the rules on the first morning:

- Safety, of course. This was going to be a hot range, so absolutely no safety violations. Multiple shooting stations, the possibility multiple shooters engaging at one time, multiple targets. Screw up, and you're out of there.

- Students were 100% responsible for keeping their rifles running 100% of the time. You experience stoppages from ammo, mags, optics, lube, cleaning, gear -- you get a time out.

- This will not be a PRS-NRL-precision match course. We'll be using a lot of IPSC targets, but forget about aiming for the center of the target (i.e. the belly button) like you do in PRS. Our mental target area is the unmarked upper thoracic cavity. If you aren't hitting this area, shoot more carefully. If you're drilling a small section in the center of the upper thoracic cavity, shoot faster. Think of this as a 2-way range, but without bullets coming back at you. You perform poorly on a drill -- the instructor feedback might be "you just got killed by the bad guy". Nobody wanted that feedback. But we all received it.

ARs ranged from budget builds to PSA to BCM to premium rifles. One "interesting" student had a D&L Sports AR15, which he seemed to think made him the badass. He didn't clean/lube it each night, and by the 3rd day was experiencing cycling problems. He was told "you just died" a few times. The SWAT guy asked me how my equally expensive and really tight Wilson Combat was doing -- no cycling issues, because it was fairly clean & lubed, using quality mags & ammo. I used up a few of the cat's nine lives during that course, but not from equipment issues.

The SWAT officer stated there's no excuse for allowing a failure from a poorly maintained rifle. It's not like you're in the middle of The Sandbox, firing a thousand rounds a day at Hadji, with no way to maintain your rifle each night. I keep my ARs relatively clean and relatively well lubed. They work without fail.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
Cleaning an AR takes me 15-20 minutes.

The process you describe is pretty much all I do.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
Where there's wind & dry conditions -- beware.

Yeah, sounds like summer in Phoenix to me.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
The SWAT officer stated there's no excuse for allowing a failure from a poorly maintained rifle. It's not like you're in the middle of The Sandbox, firing a thousand rounds a day at Hadji, with no way to maintain your rifle each night. I keep my ARs relatively clean and relatively well lubed. They work without fail.

Well, I have a thing for touching the stove, so I'm gonna run this experiment. I grew up hearing about how unreliable and crappy the AR was, the whole ".22 popgun" Fuddlore from my father, the .308 adherent. When I got my first AR, a PSA back in 2010 with a midlength FN barrel, I decided to shoot it without cleaning until I got a failure, just to see for myself. I made it up to somewhere around 750+ rounds of Wolf before I got a stuck case. The extractor ripped a chunk out of the rim and I had to pound it out with a range rod. My guess is the lacquer built up in the chamber and got hot, and maybe this one had a bit more of it and it had enough time to sit. Anyway, I think somewhere around there, I spritzed some oil into the chamber and into the carrier group, and then it went somewhere north of a thousand rounds without anything else happening before I decided that was enough and cleaned it. I think I'll duplicate this test suppressed (not with steel cased ammo), and then go back to my cleaning regimen, which pretty well mirrors yours, I just haven't been quite as religious about it. Since I wasn't shooting suppressed before, my rifles didn't really get that dirty, so after I run this test and start getting some failures, I'll probably become somewhat religious about it. Like you say, there's no reason not to, since I live indoors, and not in a combat zone.

quote:

using a suppressor can reduce the effective life of a barrel by up to 50%

I didn't know that; interesting.

I definitely have a discipline problem, when it comes to cleaning. I'd be better-off if I spent the fifteen minutes after every outing. Hell, my whole preparedness "system" would be better-off. Instead I put it off until it takes me over an hour in total, spread out over two or three separate cleaning sessions, with the gun laying in pieces on a table in the corner for a few days. Not ideal.

I clean my AR like was mentioned above after each range session, suppressed or not. It takes 15 minutes to wipe the insides down and clean the BCG. I also am a big proponent that you can’t have too much oil on it, the excess will run off or be blown out when you touch off the first round.

When I was in the CG we tortured some rifles by using them at every range training we gave and by not cleaning them. The only thing we did was squirt some break free in a sluggish rifle and have the shooter keep going. Thousands of rounds ran thru the same 10 rifles until there was a broken extractor. You don’t have to keep them immaculate.

Well, I broke from my experiment routine. I failed to keep track of how many rounds I put through it over the last two range trips, but it was at least 240 rounds, maybe upwards of 300. Trying to think how many magazines I ran through it and having a hard time tallying it up, should have just stuck them aside once empty. Oh well.

I also went ahead and cleaned it, and swapped out the carrier for the hard chromed carrier group I had sitting on a shelf. Hell with it. I don't mind dirty guns, but I couldn't locate my spray bottle of RemOil, and it was getting to the point where I was starting to notice the carrier sticking a bit. So, it's been wiped out, greased, and reassembled. If I can't find my RemOil, I'll just buy some more and hose it down next time.

I was impressed with how caked on the fouling was in and on everything in the receiver. It didn't take much to be filthier than I've ever let one get.

Clean the carbon from the upper & lower w/ solvent.
With BCG disassembled.
Spray BC,Bolt,F-Pin w/ Super Lube aerosol lube.
Reassemble the BCG.
With upper inverted,close the port door & spray the inside of the upper & CHandle w/Super Lube aerosol lube.

After a few hundred rounds fired,90% of the carbon is wiped away from the above mentioned parts w/a shop towel.

Suppressed on non-suppressed

Thank Me later!!