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Firearms Legal Protection

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  1. #11
    MGO Member westcliffe01's Avatar
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    Once a rifle is grouping larger than 3" it's hard to tell.
    Have seen completely shot out barrels with virtually no rifling left still shooting 3"
    If there is a sighting problem, that could do it. But sights should be on barrel and upper.
    I saw one case (savage rifle) where the wrong recoil lug was used which had a pin and the pin bottomed out before the nut tightened on the action and the previous owner had been shooting it like that. I got it as a total basket case, even though it had a select match barrel and custom trigger.

    I had to remove the barrel, get the correct recoil lug put it back together and re-headspace it, then fasten the nut and re-check. That rifle shoots groups with holes overlapping, near 1 shot groups

    So I would agree that very likely something is terribly wrong with the barrel action interface or with the barrel itself. I would get the barrel borescoped and have it recorded. Could be chamber is way eccentric to bore or a multitude of sins. If you saw some of the chamber casts of TC chambers and others it is no surprise some barrels won't shoot.

  2. #12
    MGO Member westcliffe01's Avatar
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    Here is a link to the TC chamber casts
    http://www.lasc.us/BellmChamberCasts.htm

  3. #13
    I am a Forum User
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    Sometimes you just get a screwed up barrel. I believe Faxon has an accuracy guarantee. Send it back to them after you send them the list of all the things you have tried. They will mount it up and test fire it. If it is the barrel they will send you another one. Another thing to try before sending it back is to mount the barrel in another rife to determine that it is the barrel. An other cause of poor accuracy is an off canter receiver face. Check the face of the receiver where the barrel goes in. It must be completely flat and square. If it is off then you can use a tool to square the receiver.

  4. #14
    I am a Forum User
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    I would also check the bottom of the gas block. Especially the screws. I have had issues where the Handguard was flexing and pushing on the screws on the bottom of the gas block. This caused huge groups. Once I cut down the gas block screws so they were flush with the bottom of the gas block, I never had an accuracy problem

  5. #15
    MGO Member Scandiacus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Danco411 View Post
    Sometimes you just get a screwed up barrel. I believe Faxon has an accuracy guarantee. Send it back to them after you send them the list of all the things you have tried. They will mount it up and test fire it. If it is the barrel they will send you another one. Another thing to try before sending it back is to mount the barrel in another rife to determine that it is the barrel. An other cause of poor accuracy is an off canter receiver face. Check the face of the receiver where the barrel goes in. It must be completely flat and square. If it is off then you can use a tool to square the receiver.
    Unfortunately I don't have a spare to upper to try mounting the barrel to (not going to risk disassembling my only other AR). The receiver face did seem flat and square, and mated up tightly to the barrel during both installations. However, I'll check it again if/when I end up disassembling this upper again.

    Quote Originally Posted by Evansky2 View Post
    I would also check the bottom of the gas block. Especially the screws. I have had issues where the Handguard was flexing and pushing on the screws on the bottom of the gas block. This caused huge groups. Once I cut down the gas block screws so they were flush with the bottom of the gas block, I never had an accuracy problem
    The screws were flush with the gas block, and no part of the gas block touched the handguard, even when the handguard was under pressure.

  6. #16
    MGO Member Scandiacus's Avatar
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    Alright, I had some time this afternoon to conduct some more testing. I wasn't able to mechanically rest the rifle, just shot it prone resting off a bag at 100 yards using a red dot. I allowed at least 5 minutes between strings of fire for the barrel to cool. I also shot my Ruger AR556 alongside just to help make sure I wasn't the problem (it's not free floated, but has a very heavy barrel). Oddly, I shot the Ruger worse than I did yesterday, the homebuilt rifle did better than yesterday, but the Ruger still significantly outperformed it.

    Here's how testing went down:

    1.) 5 shots of Winchester 45gr JHP grouped into 4.5". Wow, that's the best this rifle has done yet!

    2.) 5 shots of Winchester manufactured 62gr M855. Only 4 of the 5 shots actually hit the 16"x16" paper target. Those 4 shots grouped 4.5". Hmmmmm....

    3.) 5 shots of 55gr M193 from the Ruger AR556 just to see how I'm doing. 5 shots grouped into 4". Not my best, but OK....*

    4.) 5 shots of 55gr M193 from the Faxon rifle. At this point it's been cooling in the shade for 15+ minutes. 6.75" group. Not great.

    5.) Installed BCG from the Ruger into the homebuilt rifle (verified correct headspace last night). 5 shots of M193. Only 4 hit paper, and those 4 "grouped" into 9".

    6.) Re-installed the Faxon bolt, and removed the A2 flash hider. 5 shots of M193, only 2 hit paper, although those two holes were nearly touching. I don't think this barrel likes having a bare muzzle.

    7.) Fired the Ruger to check my own shooting again. I hadn't brought enough M193 with me, so I fired 5 rounds of Federal American Eagle 55gr 223. Grouped into 3.25".

    So now I'm even more confused than yesterday. The Faxon barreled upper seems to be all over the place in terms of its performance. My shooting wasn't the best today*, but the Faxon still grouped 55% worse than the Ruger on average (and 81% worse on average when single fliers were omitted). The Faxon does seem to like 45gr ammo, but a 1:8 twist barrel should handle heavier stuff just fine.

    Whereas the Ruger - both today and in general - tends to print groups with fairly even spacing, the Faxon tends to print split groups. For example, in test #4, 3 hits were tightly clustered, and the other 2 hits were tightly clustered, but the centers of the two clusters were about 4" apart. The 9" group (if you can call it that) from #5 looks really bad, but I'm not sure if it was a fair test since it used the Ruger bolt in the Faxon barrel. They did headspace together properly, so it should've been fine, but....

    Is it normal for a pinned gas block to have a bit of side-to-side wobble? During installation, the gas block had about 5 to 10 degrees of rotation after pinning. It just occurred to me that might not be normal. All the wobble went away once the set screws were tightened down, but that does make me wonder if it was drilled correctly at the factory.

    What do you guys think? Should I still reach out to Faxon and/or Aero Precision about the barrel and upper? Or do more testing?



    *- The sun was in my eyes. ...actually, it literally was the entire time. Gun ranges should not face south.

  7. #17
    I am a Forum User
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    My gut tells me it has to be something with the barrel. As mentioned by Danco, the upper could not be square but I have not seen that contribute to causing a rifle not hit a target. On both of the uppers I built with aero uppers they had more than acceptable accuracy even before squaring them up. Also you see people building guns with PSA and Anderson uppers that are considered “lesser quality” that can at least hold a 3 inch group let alone land all shots on paper.

    I would take the upper apart and check a couple things:
    1.) before you remove the barrel nut check to see if it is still tight and if there is movement in the barrel.

    2.) after removing the barrel nut see how much ply there is between the barrel and upper. Though not critical, I shimmed my barrel to remove any play between the barrel and upper and it resulted in about .5 moa better groups.

    3.) visually inspect the barrel. See if there are any noticeable defect areas while looking though the chamber with the barrel out of the upper.

    You can check the gas system but since you stated that there is nothing contacting the barrel the only thing I can think of is either the barrel is loose or you got a bad barrel.

    Lastly I would search AR15.com to see if there is anyone with the same type of issue with that barrel.

  8. #18
    MGO Member Scandiacus's Avatar
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    Kudos to Faxon for great customer service! I sent them an email last night around 9:45 detailing the problem and outlining the troubleshooting I had done so far. They responded at 8:30 this morning and said that, based on the troubleshooting I had done, it is most likely an issue with the barrel itself. They're express shipping me a replacement barrel, along with a prepaid return label for the faulty barrel. Hopefully this fixes the issue!

    Unfortunately, they are out of stock on the pencil barrels for the foreseeable future (they didn't say, but I suspect Brownells has just about bought them out for their upcoming WWSD 2020 rifle). I will be receiving a Gunner profile barrel instead, which has a government profile behind the gas block, and a pencil barrel profile forward of the gas block. It's 3 oz heavier, but I wasn't going for an ultra lightweight build anyway... just kinda lightweight. Not to mention their Gunner barrel is still slimmer and lighter than their competitors' pencil barrels, so....

    Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!

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