Is plunger & spring suppose to stay in the stock when opening rifle up?
Opened 2 ARs up this week and 1 the plunger/spring stayed in stock and 2an one they popped out.
Is plunger & spring suppose to stay in the stock when opening rifle up?
Opened 2 ARs up this week and 1 the plunger/spring stayed in stock and 2an one they popped out.
Just because something is legal to do doesn't mean it is the smart thing to do.
Yes. Should stay put.
Out of spec tubes with threads not cut properly or notched incorrectly won't keep the plunger properly captured when you pull the upper / rear pin and separate the halves.
It can also be a simple fix with another 1/4 turn of the tuber and locked back down.
Orig Milspec should look like this: (I believe this was the orig milspec style... there's probably a long list of facebook operators to tell me I'm wrong)
Newer tubes have a protruding tongue and a notch because 3rd and 4th tear manufactures couldn't figure out how to time threading correctly on a CNC machine.
So they look like this and take all the brainwork out of it.
Last edited by Quads; 07-22-2020 at 12:07 PM.
Also, you can notch a milspec tube with a square file. Time it correctly as you thread it in, so you get the benefit of the notch with a traditional tube.
Careful threading the buffer tube in to far will cause problems with the upper fitting, it may seem like the upper is out of spec and the take down pins are really hard to take in and out.
I just built a PSA lower and the buffer plunger/retaining pin hole was not correctly machined. When I dropped the spring and pin in it got wedged down. Everything I did to get it out just wedged down further. After everything I could think of included grinding down pair of needle nose vise grips, I had to grind out the damn thing with a dremel tool. Now the hole is over sized with lots of play in the pin. I had to thread the buffer tube in too far just the catch the pin and hold it in place, that caused the upper to barely fit. I ground down the buffer tube with a dremel and now it all seems to work, it has about 100 rounds of blackout through it and I just shot another upper on it last weekend and went though 80 rounds of 5.56.
I sent PSA several emails with no response, I have and have had several PSA AR's, this was a first for me. Pretty disappointing.
you may find placing a call to customer service may work better than emails..you'll have to wait.. but you may actually get to speak to someone.
My repeated emails were totally ignored, until I read about a new customer service link being implemented (this was several yrs.ago )
sent an email to that (new) address & it was answered quite fast.. customer service has not been a strong support @ PSA, in my experience.