Strange AR-15 build and some gun price/rarity history

The carry handle upper was always the best thing about an AR. Love that set up.

in general Colts were so full of half-assedness that I can't see their praise. A new FCG and bolt carrier will probably fix it. The did loose their M16 contracts a few times because they weren't even good enough for government work.

As far as the FSB, do you really need to remove it at all? Many people shoot with scopes and an FSB like that with zero issue.

If you do need to remove it, put it in the freezer for a few hours and pound the pins from the correct side. I don't go by which side your supposed to, but rather by the side with the smaller pin. If it won't come out, thats likely it. They press out better hammer out.

It looks like its in nice shape, and after these years you may make some money back on that A1 upper. They're really hard to get these days. Even the reproductions have been out of stock for years.

I too remember when an Olympic AR was $1000 and a Colt was $1600 around '04... I got a WASR instead for $370. In '08 I got a M&A AR Kit and a bushmaster stripped lower for $640. Still have it, and its still works.

Back then an AR got you a lot of looks and questions at the range.

Oh yea, and good like finding anything other than an "H-Bar"... yea, a 16" 8.5lb carbine makes a lot of sense. Pretty sure it was just about saving some lathe time.

That's just a true A1 upper... fixed carry handle, A1 sights, no brass deflector.

Have you pulled the handguards off to see if there are any other markings on the barrel? Kind of looks like a varmint shooter's setup, in a weird sort of way. 1:12 is very likely.

I put a scope on my Colt A2 H-Bar... you're right... you need a pillow to get your head high enough. That didn't last long.

I'm actually looking for an A1 upper, I'm gonna build a replica of the M16A1's like I had in the Army... just because.

Just need an old school cheek riser to go with that scope height.
https://thecoltar15resource.com/colt-sporter-cheekpiece-pn-ca10026/

silicosys4 said:

Yup, there was a time when AR's were exotic.

Back when SKS's and Mak-90's were cheap and everywhere like the AR is now, and the AR was an expensive unicorn.

The FSB isn't the problem, thats going back onto the gun. The problem is the upper receivers incompatibility with scopes. I've got to get the FSB off to change the upper receiver.
One of these days I'll get back at it but for now its sitting as I bought it 20+ years ago.

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That should be as simple as punching the gastube roll pin with a 1/16 punch, vicegripping/hammering the the tube a little, and rebarreling. No need to remove the FSB for that.

So, chasing some loose ends here…

If you picked it up in 2002, it wasn’t after the ban sunset, because that didn’t happen until fall 2004. For what it’s worth, I started using gun forums pretty avidly in 1998, and by the end of the Federal AWB, I was ordering a couple dozen Bushmaster and DPMS lowers at a time over email, having started doing so around 2000/1. But a guy had to really be looking to find good info on AR’s back then, I’ll concede the point.

However, considering this is a legit pre-ban lower, since Robert changed the rollmark on his AR’s in 1993, the year before the ban went into effect, AND considering this has a legit A1 upper receiver, but A2 furniture, this thing absolutely SCREAMS “pre-ban rebuilt during the ban era” to me. During the ban, I remember building rifles kinda like this on pre-ban lowers for an extreme premium. I’d pay RIDICULOUS prices for pre-ban lowers for special customer orders, and then end up charging three times as much for the rifle than it should have cost, simply because that’s what the market would bear - which lines up pretty well for the timing of $1000 for this particular franken-build. By 2005, I would have been selling a rifle like that out of the door for $350-400 (although on an A2 upper, by the sunset, getting A1’s was pretty rare). It doesn’t look all pre-ban to me, most rifles did better back then to align A2 uppers and furniture, or A1. I’m not terribly certain this was necessarily built for long range shooting - other than it was just available to get that barrel configuration at the time. So this kinda just looks like the common cobbled together AR build made to allow that muzzle brake during the ban by scavenging some pre-ban lower with A1 hardware. If it’s a slow twist, that’s another indicator to me that it’s ban-era built, as 1:9’s and faster really flooded the market post-ban, but during the ban, we were hocking 1:12’s and 1:14’s like crazy, and charging a premium for the good fast twist barrels we could get.

So I’m prone to bet you DID pick this up around 2002 as a “pre-ban lower rebuilt during the ban.”

What’s the rear sling mount like up close? The pic isn’t great, but that’s not A1 or A2. It looks like it has a swivel head, or maybe has a 90degree mount rather than the simple stamped tang on the sling mount. What’s the barrel length?

Haha, I dig it.
Ya, no need to take off the FSB, just remove the gas tube to get off the D-ring/barrel nut.

Takes me back to when I was just getting interested in guns and every shop had a display rack behind the counter full of $1100 bushmasters, and the $200 AK’s and $99 SKS were stacked up in a corner. Oh how things have changed. I really wanted one but they cost more than my first 3 cars combined.

Cool story. I suspect @Varminterror is in the ballpark. I remember paying $1,300 for a preban Colt Match HBAR in 1998 or thereabouts, in NYS no less. Good times … not. Eventually parted it out after the sunset and got my money back selling the preban lower to an FFL in a state with a continuing ban, no doubt for a legal custom build.

Interesting lower. What's the story with the pin below the safety lever? Overtravel stop?

Destructo6 said:

Interesting lower. What's the story with the pin below the safety lever? Overtravel stop?

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It's probably a feature to keep the trigger from going to the dreaded FA position.

That's a blast from the past.
Lots of goofy stuff in those years.
Thumbhole stocks and nekid barrels.

If you like that version I would get another barrel and a decent BCG.
Maybe some fresh furniture and a new trigger.

Or swing by PSA and get another upper for it.

Legionnaire said:

I remember paying $1,300 for a preban Colt Match HBAR in 1998 or thereabouts

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I've debated throwing up my preban H-Bar on GB to see what it would fetch. I don't know if they still draw the interest they used to in ban states...

Varminterror said:

AND considering this has a legit A1 upper receiver, but A2 furniture, this thing absolutely SCREAMS “pre-ban rebuilt during the ban era” to me.

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I was wondering about that, meself... the A2 handguards. I'm not even sure about that stock... that looks pre-A1 to me, but I'm not that well-versed in the minutae of the early AR's.

Charlie98 said:

I've debated throwing up my preban H-Bar on GB to see what it would fetch. I don't know if they still draw the interest they used to in ban states...

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Gotta be very specific - most of the ban states seem to have abandoned grandfathering of RIFLES, and only allow grandfathering - if at all - of the possession. I sure haven’t seen any pre-ban lowers bringing premiums for being pre-ban like they did during the ban. The only exceptions, of course, would be vintage RIFLES in specific original or clone formats - so it’s not a value on the lower, but a value on the rifle.

The AR market has wholly left the pre-ban/post-ban/ban-era vibe behind. Talking this language in 2022/23 is like talking about buggy whips in contemporary America. The entire AR industry before the ban, during, and the immediate “post ban era” thereafter isn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to the current market. Back then, I was ordering custom machined barrel nuts and aluminum and carbon fiber tubing from industrial supply companies to make free float handguards - since they simply weren’t available on the market. I was drilling and tapping gas blocks, cutting away FSB’s, or making my own blocks entirely, because widely available AGB’s weren’t yet a thing, We were cutting A2 handles off of uppers and screwing on scope blocks, because A3/A4’s weren’t available… it’s an entirely new world, so dinosaur saddles just don’t have the market they once had.

Varminterror said:

The AR market has wholly left the pre-ban/post-ban/ban-era vibe behind ...

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This.

@silicosys4 - I started building on stripped lowers around 1998/1999. You wouldn’t find them on a shelf anywhere, but they were readily ordered from several makers (obviously not as many as we have available making lowers today), even without being a gunsmith - obviously transferred through FFL’s. I ordered most of my primary components from Bushmaster at the time.

Yes, A2’s were available in the 1998-2004+ ballpark, and of course thereafter. I built a lot of them for other service rifle shooters. I’m really trying to recall if I ever had A1’s floating around more readily available than A2’s - I don’t recall that ever happening, but that COULD have been a thing in the pre-ban and early ban era up to 1998 - as I mentioned, I didn’t start building until ‘98. Flattops were the ones which weren’t really yet available in the mid-ban era - but I swallowed those up as fast as I could once they became mainstream. I think my first delivery of 50 flattop uppers would have been late 2002/early 2003 and was a mixed bag of A3, slick sided, and “EOP’s” from DPMS (Elevated Optics Platform - basically added a half inch or so, such the pic rail put standard medium scope rings at the right height over the handguard). I moved in may of ‘04 and don’t recall having trouble getting flattops after moving into my new space - but I did keep a lot of inventory on hand and placed big orders… for a kid just building AR’s out of their basement “gunshop”. I would order 50-100 LPK’s at a time, 20-50 uppers and lowers, and BCG’s. Admittedly, I HATED the look of EOP uppers, but part of me still likes the way conventional scope rings look on top of a rifle than tall cantilevers. But I haven’t seen an EOP upper in many moons.

That 24” barrel likely WAS a standard catalog offering at the time. Remember, SBR’s weren’t really a thing in the market yet, and even the M4 wasn’t terribly popular yet and was REALLY frowned upon for civilian use, so rifle length 20” and 24” barrels with slow twists were very popular among the folks buying watered down AR’s at the time. It was relatively LATE ban, or really post ban before the boom of carbine length barrels hit the market. Also recall, many folks even at that time weren’t used to barrels as short as 20”, and certainly not the Varminters who were buying AR’s. As an example, look at the Bushmaster Varmint Special Stainless, it was a flattop with an A2 stock and a 24” slow twist barrel, and they were HOT items at the time. So slow twist 24” barrels, with .75” gas blocks were actually REALLY popular in that era. I built dozens of them for varminters and coyote hunters in the early days.

Also, the knowledge for building these things WAS out there in the late 1990’s and 2000’s - remember, our military had been fielding M16’s for 30yrs before the ban even started. Civilian market wasn’t huge, but AR’s were around to be had before the ban. I didn’t learn from any kind of military service - I bought a manual and learned basic assembly from a service rifle shooter - because I didn’t want to pay the prices required for my own SR match rifle, and I started building AR’s for civilians in ‘98/99. I was building 6.8 SPC’s and my first Grendels out of the group buys we did back in the last couple of years of the ban in 2003 and 2004, entering the infancy of the “specialty AR era” even before the ban even ended. No, not EVERYONE had the tools and knowledge to build an AR the way we have it now, but it wasn’t some kind of State Secret. I do remember talking online back in the ban era with other builders about best methods to pin carbine stocks for all of function, rigidity, apparent permanence, and reversibility (not that any customer ever removed the pin to create an illegal configuration).

But anyway… if you DID pick this up post-ban, after Sept 2004, this is kind of a weird one to buy at that time. All AR’s by then were unrestricted, and the true value of “pre-ban” lowers had evaporated - the only reason folks were still paying more was because a goodly portion of the country thought we were going to have another ban, and were counting on the OLD pre-ban grandfathering carrying forward into any new ban as well.

This thread has been kinda fun for me - I hadn’t strolled down this era of memory lane like this in a long time. My son, 9, who has never seen any kind of “retro build” and only knows life within the era of infinite parts options, and has been enthralled with some of the stories this thread has drummed up about different rifles I built and different parts I had to make of have made to accomplish different builds back then.

Interesting. That short hand guard and the long barrel do look funky though.

herrwalther said:

Interesting. That short hand guard and the long barrel do look funky though.

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That’s a rifle length handguard and gas system, it’s just a 24” barrel sticking out front.

These days, it would have a float tube and be hiding the gas block, so a 24” barrel wouldn’t look so long, but when you have 12” of barrel past your gas block shoulder, it looks a bit odd. That muzzle device is none-too-short either.

Varminterror said:

That’s a rifle length handguard and gas system, it’s just a 24” barrel sticking out front.

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They just wanted it to look like an FAL...

someguy2800 said:

Takes me back to when I was just getting interested in guns and every shop had a display rack behind the counter full of $1100 bushmasters, and the $200 AK’s and $99 SKS were stacked up in a corner. Oh how things have changed. I really wanted one but they cost more than my first 3 cars combined.

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When I was a kid I remember seeing all the racks upon racks of $99 SKS's, $250 Maadi AK's, $75 91/30's, etc... I wasn't of legal buying age but I couldn't wait to get myself a job and return when it was my time and buy 3 of everything, lol. I also used to circle guns in shotgun news and dream of owning everything in that catalog.

When I first went out after an AR there were the same typical 5 manufacturers on the rack that I'd always seen, the big 5 of that time. Bushmaster, Colt, Stag, Olympic and DPMS. I bought a very simple DPMS Sportical for around $800 while the others were $1000 and up.

silicosys4 said:

Looks to be right at 23"-24" or so best as I can tell. I'm assuming the ported portion is threaded on and some of the barrel is hidden beneath the threads, although i've never had any luck getting it to unscrew.

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Flash Hiders were another evil feature and barrels had no threads.
That may be some type of integrated brake.

silicosys4 said:

As far as getting the barrel off, am I to understand correctly that If I unpin the gas tube from the FSB I can then pull the gas tube out the front of the upper receiver?

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Yep, a 5/64"/ #2 punch, no need to remove the FSB, unless you intend to install it on another barrel.