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I finally got my .308 uppers back from the dpms warranty dept. Took over a year. They were having bolt-over-base failures, the ubiquitous feed failure so many dpms-pattern 308 AR's have. Made them useless. Well I guess I could have used them as single-shots...
I'll give you a condensed version of my long and $$$ journey. If you hate your 308 AR because of this serious and widespread problem now you'll know the solution and be able to love your 308 AR again like you should. Here's what happened to me when this problem appeared on my range trip out with my first two 308's:
Upon inspection I found copper dots on the upper just below the feed ramps. The bolt was evidently slamming the cartridges forward into the wall of the upper instead of feeding them into the chamber. I believe this is because the centerline of the top cartridge in the mag and the centerline of the chamber are such a great distance apart in the 308 AR's.
I changed over to pmags, which helped but did not solve the issue completely.
Then I began the intricate dance of the dpms warranty process. Sent 'em back to the factory. They sat on 'em for months. Then came Dec. Then they used the excuse that the "Newtown crisis" was making it hard to get parts and labor time.
That pissed me off... now it was over 6 mo.'s in warranty.
They sent 'em back first time and it looked like they hadn't hardly done anything. Test-firing exposed that the problem wasn't solved. Back to the factory...
Anywaze the factory cut M4 feedramps into the upper and the barrel. This was my prediction of what would be necessary to solve this problem in the first place. I just didn't want to do such a hack-fix myself if that wasn't the solution. But it was. And it seems to work great now.
Me and a buddy have come to the conclusion that they fire 'em on full-auto to test if they feed right. Makes sense...anywaze the uppers were returned dirty like they had 100's of rounds thru 'em and hadn't been cleaned.
Kinda wish the solution wasn't a dremel job but it's a nice dremel job and it works so what the hell? I really doubt it's gonna be any problem reliability-wise... just looks kinda odd. The feedramps in the upper itself are bare aluminum now... doubt it will make any difference as the forces acting upon that ramp I don't perceive to be that great
So just as I have long suspected the fix to 308 AR feeding problems is to cut M4 feedramps. Dremel if necessary: it's a factory fix. All new 308 AR's should mos def come from their manufacturers with M4 feedramps and mebbe the platform wouldn't have such a bad reputation.
Now if only each magfull i can blow thru so fast now wasn't like $7-8 each... oh well
And to whoever got all my steel 308 mags that I sold so cheap trying to solve this problem: good job taking advantage of that great opportunity and if you're having this problem here's your solution!!!
I'll give you a condensed version of my long and $$$ journey. If you hate your 308 AR because of this serious and widespread problem now you'll know the solution and be able to love your 308 AR again like you should. Here's what happened to me when this problem appeared on my range trip out with my first two 308's:
Upon inspection I found copper dots on the upper just below the feed ramps. The bolt was evidently slamming the cartridges forward into the wall of the upper instead of feeding them into the chamber. I believe this is because the centerline of the top cartridge in the mag and the centerline of the chamber are such a great distance apart in the 308 AR's.
I changed over to pmags, which helped but did not solve the issue completely.
Then I began the intricate dance of the dpms warranty process. Sent 'em back to the factory. They sat on 'em for months. Then came Dec. Then they used the excuse that the "Newtown crisis" was making it hard to get parts and labor time.
That pissed me off... now it was over 6 mo.'s in warranty.
They sent 'em back first time and it looked like they hadn't hardly done anything. Test-firing exposed that the problem wasn't solved. Back to the factory...
Anywaze the factory cut M4 feedramps into the upper and the barrel. This was my prediction of what would be necessary to solve this problem in the first place. I just didn't want to do such a hack-fix myself if that wasn't the solution. But it was. And it seems to work great now.
Me and a buddy have come to the conclusion that they fire 'em on full-auto to test if they feed right. Makes sense...anywaze the uppers were returned dirty like they had 100's of rounds thru 'em and hadn't been cleaned.
Kinda wish the solution wasn't a dremel job but it's a nice dremel job and it works so what the hell? I really doubt it's gonna be any problem reliability-wise... just looks kinda odd. The feedramps in the upper itself are bare aluminum now... doubt it will make any difference as the forces acting upon that ramp I don't perceive to be that great
So just as I have long suspected the fix to 308 AR feeding problems is to cut M4 feedramps. Dremel if necessary: it's a factory fix. All new 308 AR's should mos def come from their manufacturers with M4 feedramps and mebbe the platform wouldn't have such a bad reputation.
Now if only each magfull i can blow thru so fast now wasn't like $7-8 each... oh well
And to whoever got all my steel 308 mags that I sold so cheap trying to solve this problem: good job taking advantage of that great opportunity and if you're having this problem here's your solution!!!
