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A few years ago (way prior to Hawaii), I went from buying any .22lr that was a "deal" to just a few kinds... Federal Automatch, CCI Quiets/SV/Stingers. I don't buy anything else and would periodically stock that stuff. I think I left about 20k rds of the Automatch in VA with a buddy. I used to be stoked to buy this stuff for $17.50 at Walmart when I got lucky... best guess at the time was that we'd never see it cheaper. WOW.
A few years ago (way prior to Hawaii), I went from buying any .22lr that was a "deal" to just a few kinds... Federal Automatch, CCI Quiets/SV/Stingers. I don't buy anything else and have been happy. I used to just concede that my zero would be off every time I switched brands and would need to hold over/under after a few shots where I learned where each one hit. Screw that.
I think I left about 20k rds of the Automatch in VA with a buddy. I used to be stoked to buy this stuff for $17.50 at Walmart when I got lucky... best guess at the time was that we'd never see it cheaper. WOW.
One of my friends has a bunch of land up in north GA. Went up there last week to play with his new toy- shoots 6.5 SAUM. Amazing piece of machinery. We were shooting at 200 yards; basically no drop at that range, and the bullets rip through 3/8” plate steel like it’s paper. I was aiming at the quarter-sized rust spot. For comparison, the hole that doesn’t go all the way through was 5.56.
^No direct knowledge, but will say that you're likely throwing a bunch of money at the name. It looks like the base model M400 is $800, and they go up to $1300'ish for some fancy shizzle. Obviously you could purchase an assemble yourself a vastly superior (on paper) gun for $800 than I'm seeing in the M400... what appears to be a very straight-forward nothing-fancy production gun. For $1300, you're into best-of-everything money that the M400 clearly is not.
The lower has a few proprietary touches (like the built-in sling points) that may or may not be your thing. It also has a staked castle nut on the buffer tube and a non-auto phosphate BCG, meh. I can find no real specs no the barrel other than it's chrome-lined.
YT videos are lukewarm, and I suspect that it's because of the price. For the money people nowadays expect more from a gun that I think you get from the M400. Nobody has anything bad to say about it, but you're not gonna find anything bad to say about any production gun, really. As long as they're priced properly, you know what to expect. Once you get into the $800 range, you should really expect some better coatings, upgraded trigger, included sights, some kind of bling.
And all of the above is why I love Aero Precision, ALG Defense, Toolcraft, and Magpul. With those companies, you know exactly what you're going to get, they are priced below their weight class in most cases, they have great QA/QC.
I cant comment directly on the M400 but generally guns like that you buy from big names that supply police and military around the world are tested and proven. The "mil spec" parts get actually inspected to the mil spec drawing and tolerances, unlike the "mil spec" parts you buy online that are more like compatible with mil spec. Like you see 6061 buffer tubes advertised as mil spec, um pal, mil spec is 7075.
I cant comment directly on the M400 but generally guns like that you buy from big names that supply police and military around the world are tested and proven. The "mil spec" parts get actually inspected to the mil spec drawing and tolerances, unlike the "mil spec" parts you buy online that are more like compatible with mil spec. Like you see 6061 buffer tubes advertised as mil spec, um pal, mil spec is 7075.
I agree with all of that, especially the "tested and proven"... but with the standard caveat that Milspec is a set of standards that in most cases is not established because it's "the best". There are a lot of compromises when it comes to Milspec.
My FailZero BCG is an example of a product that begins with a Milspec part and then "exceeds" the spec by adding a slick coating that enhances function beyond the requirements of the Milspec phosphate coating. The coating allows the gun to operate with reduced or zero lubrication and reduces field maintenance considerably.
Personally, I would never buy a production AR-15... just not my style. I like what I like for the money I can spend and I haven't found one yet that ticks every box for me. Also because the wife won't let me drop that much money at one time.
However, that's just for my go-to gun... for my backups, linked is the best deal you're gonna find anywhere. PSA sells that Toolcraft NIB BCG for $100, and an MBUS set is $50... which means you get an otherwise complete pencil-barrel upper for $150. It's a damned good deal. I'll have two of those in he safe at some point.
Anybody have one of these?
I'm thinking about purchasing either the KPOS Scout, or maybe the G2 for my Glock 19. Then there's the Micro Roni:
...not sure which to roll with, but I'm thinking KPOS.
There are several conversion kits out there... and there are basically 4 ways to go with a conversion:
#1: Kit with an arm brace and a hand-stop with any length barrel = still just a pistol.
#2: Kit with an arm brace and a vertical foregrip with any length barrel = AOM.
#3: Kit with a stock and a barrel less than 16" = your pistol needs to be registered as an SBR.
#4: Kit with a stock an a 16" barrel = rifle (no NFA applies).
Although no personal experience, I like the Fab Defense Kit, and they are about to release a non-NFA version for US markets... might be worth waiting for.
Speaking of milspec... just read (appearing to be reliable sources) that Carpenter 158 is not as strong as 9310 tool steel. 158 is the milspec and usually costs more, but apparently metallurgy has gotten better in the past 50 years, who knew? You can also find 8620 bolts, which I'm reading you should stay away from. IIRC, most CARRIERS are 8620 and that is the milspec... nobody seems to have found a better performing steel either for the CARRIER.
Some quotes from various sites about 9310 vs. C158:
"They are both excellent. 9310 has a small amount of molybdenum, 158 does not. 158 has a little more chrome than 9310. Otherwise they are almost identical. 9310 is more available."
"9310 material is used for a few reasons
-It's sold in round stock and it can be hard turned. It also is a high nickle steel and can be chrome plated with less issues with breaking. Because of its high nickle content it is less brittle.
-158 is the material that is Mil Spec and its as good as 9310 AS LONG AS the company buys a lot of this steel because a company would have to buy a whole mill run of this to even be able to get some. This makes it tough for companies to buy it unless they plan on being a Colt size mil spec supplier/contractor.
-158 Mil Spec which means 158 material is on the TDP but as soon as the next TDP holder submits this material change to 9310 the US Government will accept it, because there is not any durability or function change.
-158 is cheaper but 9310 can be purchased in lower amounts, which for most manufactures is even more important."
"IIRC, the original specifications for the GI issue model were for AQ-9310 (aircraft quality). The bolts were supposed to be good for 75K rounds, but most showed signs of cracking after 50-60K. I think that heat treat was changed to nitriding, but the numbers never got up to specificaitons. P-6 and 9310 are very close in composition. The 9310 has some molybedenum while the P-6 has more chrome and nickel. Which is better? Don't know, I barely made it through that class. IMO, the heat treat is probably more important than the alloy comp."
Speaking of milspec... just read (appearing to be reliable sources) that Carpenter 158 is not as strong as 9310 tool steel. 158 is the milspec and usually costs more, but apparently metallurgy has gotten better in the past 50 years, who knew? You can also find 8620 bolts, which I'm reading you should stay away from. IIRC, most CARRIERS are 8620 and that is the milspec... nobody seems to have found a better performing steel either for the CARRIER.
Some quotes from various sites about 9310 vs. C158:
"They are both excellent. 9310 has a small amount of molybdenum, 158 does not. 158 has a little more chrome than 9310. Otherwise they are almost identical. 9310 is more available."
"9310 material is used for a few reasons
-It's sold in round stock and it can be hard turned. It also is a high nickle steel and can be chrome plated with less issues with breaking. Because of its high nickle content it is less brittle.
-158 is the material that is Mil Spec and its as good as 9310 AS LONG AS the company buys a lot of this steel because a company would have to buy a whole mill run of this to even be able to get some. This makes it tough for companies to buy it unless they plan on being a Colt size mil spec supplier/contractor.
-158 Mil Spec which means 158 material is on the TDP but as soon as the next TDP holder submits this material change to 9310 the US Government will accept it, because there is not any durability or function change.
-158 is cheaper but 9310 can be purchased in lower amounts, which for most manufactures is even more important."
"IIRC, the original specifications for the GI issue model were for AQ-9310 (aircraft quality). The bolts were supposed to be good for 75K rounds, but most showed signs of cracking after 50-60K. I think that heat treat was changed to nitriding, but the numbers never got up to specificaitons. P-6 and 9310 are very close in composition. The 9310 has some molybedenum while the P-6 has more chrome and nickel. Which is better? Don't know, I barely made it through that class. IMO, the heat treat is probably more important than the alloy comp."
IIRC 8620 and Carpenter 158 is the same thing. And in most applications 8620 can be substituted for 9310, but obviously 9310 is better.
The thing to watch out for with fancy coating on bolts and carriers is the coating thickness tolerance, there's only a 1 thou window on some of those diameters on the milspec drawing and NiB typically has a larger tolerance range for coating thickness that 5 tenths (per side). So you'll spend all that time OD and ID grinding the bolt and bolt carrier to a tight tolerance but your end result part ends up out of spec after coating.
Steel metallurgy is way (way!) past any of the grades that have mentioned in the last few posts.
That said, some grades (9310 for example) are still used for some very extreme applications (gears and transmission components in military helicopters for example) because they just work and newer, fancier grades are significantly more expensive but only offer a marginal improvement in performance.
If you’d like to learn about the zenith of steel metallurgy, look into the grades they use for jet engine main shafts on next generation engines (GE LEAP for example). Nano-precipitation strengthened martensitic steels with extreme strength, toughness, ductility and fatigue performance.
Aerospace gets real crazy with steels, you'll even have 9310 that a normal person would buy vs an aero space special order that's like triple vacuum melted to have even fewer impurities. At work we do have some grades of steel we order with tighter tolerance on some of the alloying elements and tighter tolerance on some of the tests on the certs like charpys impact toughness.
Well, I haven't had a chance to shoot it yet, but here's a pic of the PSA 16" upper on my Colt lower. I bought the Colt in the '90s, and SBR'd it around 2002. We started traveling more by RV a couple years ago, and I'd been looking to pic up a 2nd AR that I could take on the road with us, but couldn't bring myself to spend the $$ when it wouldn't be used all that much. I started looking at building a 16" upper, but this thing was so cheap from PSA it wasn't worth the trouble to piecemeal it. I tossed on a Vortex 1-6 that was sitting on the shelf, and hopefully I can get a chance to zero it and see how it shoots later in the week. I pulled the bolt apart and cleaned everything, and so far I'm impressed with the quality. The machine work and finish is nicer than a Ruger AR556 I was looking at last week...
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