Advancement
Tam:
Look, if you’ve just gotta have a gun with a piston in it so your friends will know you’re cool, get a gun designed from the ground up to use a piston, not some kludge affixed to a Stoner-type bolt carrier assembly that was never intended to have a foot-long lever torquing it from the top.
On one hand, I see her point. On the other, it seems like a repudiation of advancement in firearms. And I’m not sure I like that idea. For instance, if I was in the market for a 1911 style gun, I’d get a STI, which is like a 1911 in the same way that the new VW Beetle is like the old VW Beetle.
Update: Tam in comments:
To use your VW Beetle analogy, if you want a front-engined, FWD, water-cooled car, buy a New Beetle, not a ‘71 VW that some guy with a cutoff saw has shoehorned a Golf motor into the trunk.
Heh.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:21 am
No, it’s not. Read it again.
To use your VW Beetle analogy, if you want a front-engined, FWD, water-cooled car, buy a New Beetle, not a ’71 VW that some guy with a cutoff saw has shoehorned a Golf motor into the trunk.
And the STI analogy doesn’t really fit, either, since changing the magwell dimensions is hardly the same as doing a halfassed retrofit on the operating system.
If you want a piston-driven gun, buy an ACR or SCAR, don’t get some jerry-rigged POS aftermarket piston retrofit for an AR.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Ah, the new beetle. Almost, but not quite entirely unlike the old beetle.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:40 am
I’m with Tam. The gas system on an AR does not start and stop with the front sight base and the gas tube. It also includes the bolt and carrier design since that’s where the gas ends up. You shouldn’t replace half of the gas system, the stuff in front of the chamber, and then expect this to have no effect on the rear half of the system.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Nooo! Don’t buy a New Beetle! We were considering it a while back and the horror stories were amazing – windows risers that break and drop the glass down into the door, transmissions that explode at 3k, horrible-horrible dealer service and warranties that don’t cover shit unless you buy the extra-extra warranty.
Buying a New Beatle is like buying a Kel-Tec, not a 1911.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Kel-Tec has from all accounts great service and they take care of their shit, DC. So thats a bad example. Plus, I have heard great things about the RFB and the SU-16 is a neat little trunk gun.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:35 am
What about the AR-18?
Its got a “stoner type bolt assembly” and its gas-piston operated.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:38 am
Retro fitting is usually a cluster of compromise. Slapping in a piston and calling it good is not progres – it’s marketeering. But new things have to be tried if only to get us to the next step.
Tam, would you recomend a classic 1911 without the lowered & “flared” ejection port? I would not. A 1911 with lowered, flared ports is not an original, it’s a gun that ” some guy with a cutoff saw” tinkered with.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:40 am
I’ll wait while you go tear open your AR-180 and your AR-15 and note the differences.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Mr. Chubbins,
1) For reliability, it doesn’t make any real difference. The “lowered and flared” just keeps your brass from getting torn up.
2) Like the STI magazine well in the comment above, “lowered and flared” ejection ports are not clumsily retrofitted alterations to the basic operating mechanism of the design while trying to stay inside the original lines.
Would you consider any of the following to be as reliable as a stock GI gun: the Seecamp DA conversion, the Para LDA, or one of the various gas-delayed blowback conversion attempts?
September 9th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
The difference between an AR15 system retrofitted to a short stroke gas piston and one that is still direct gas inpingement is more akin to a steam engine versus an internal combustion engine.
It changes EVERYTHING about the operating cycle, from the point the bullet passes the gas port to the bolt returning fully into battery.
Cutting away part of the slide to make the ejection port of a 1911 larger is like swapping the cheap plugs for hotter, more expensive plugs in your internal combustion engine for higher reliability. Same gun, just runs better.
Something like the STI’s modifications compared to the base 1911 are like swapping the body between an M1097 HMMWV (2dr, open top, huge cargo bed) and an M1114 HMMWV (hard top, up armored, 4-dr, smaller cargo bed). But it still employs a recognizeably 1911 operating system.
September 9th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
The similes…
they burn!
(Is that a real simile, or a Rifle No. 4?)
September 10th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Tam,
my experiance with a 1911 with the original GI type port was that the sucker jammed and the tiny port made it impossible to get the round out. Now this experiance is based on one gun, so if this is not an accurate portrayal of the origingal GI port then I bow to further knowledge.
I can’t comment to the clumsiness of any of the retrofits as I have no ind depth experiance with them. But I stand by my comment that retrofits are a cluster of compromises. To shoe horn a piston into a tiny envelope designed for a tiny tube will lead to problems.
The para LDA is an abortion. It can’t be looked at as a 1911, but as a DA gun made to look like the 1911 that reuses some of the parts. It was designed to fit the 1911 nitche but not be SA. Based on the trials and tribulations at Blackwater that you and the other cool kids had with the LDA’s: No the LDA is not as reliable. =)
But back to the ar15 platform. From a system standpoint the piston gun should be more reliable: fewer parts, design less suceptible to fouling/self cleaning.