does anyone here truly cleans AR-15 gas tube

Never use anything smaller than your elbow to clean the gas tube.

I bought some of those pipe cleaners about 10 years ago. The kids had fun making projects with them years later and I still haven’t found a reason to clean that gas tube with anything. I did take it apart and inspect it before Christmas while retrofitting a few parts with no visible reason (still) to bother.

Never. Not in over 30 years of heavily using AR-based rifles.

Never have, never will. Never had an issue.

I'll give it a snort of brake cleaner once in a blue moon, but truthfully, even that's not necessary.

The only time, and I repeat, only time that I have ever had to or seen someone clean a gas tube was with extended use of blank rounds during long training exercises. And believe me, you have to shoot a ton of blanks (with blank firing adaptor) before you start having issues.

As others have said, absolutely no need to clean the gas tube on the AR under normal use. In fact any good NCO will be all over a subordinate if they are caught sticking anything into the gas tube to clean it.

I have seen someone use a 22LR bolt conversion. Thousands and thousands of rounds. switched back to 5.56 and first round blew all the residue into the action. So i would say its "self cleaning". There was so much powder residue that the bolt was stuck half way open on the first round.

Nope. The only cleaning mine gets is with a pull of the trigger.

Never is a long, long time.

Don’t clean the inside of your gas tube. At best, it’s pointless; at worse it could cause problems if something gets stuck in there or you don’t get all the liquid out before you shoot it.

In the Marine Corps we overcleaned our rifles. A super-strong emphasis was put on constantly keeping them spotless. That said, we never cleaned the inside of the gas tubes.

Nope.

M16A1- WD40 down tube, bolt, trigger group. #9 & clp for barrel.

Never.

If something goes wrong, I'll just get a new one. Parts are cheap, my labor isn't hahahaha

taliv said:

it's self cleaning. don't mess with it
if you do mess with it, then just squirt brake cleaner or clr or something in there. no brushes.

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This.

I’d sooner pig my tailpipe than brush my gas tubes - stealing a line from an old friend.

I used to have a habit of finishing a session after which I planned to deep clean my action by generously squirting some CLP down the tube, and letting it soak muzzle down for a while. I’d then run a dry patch down the bore to push out drips and slop, then blast a dozen rounds or so to push anything which became loosened or solubilized out of the tube and into the action a which would get deep cleaned at home. Like super-charging the self-cleaning process. It never made my rifles run better, so I’ve stopped. But I’ve never done anything but give a few squirts down the tube, and wouldn’t ever recommend even that “extreme”.

Theohazard said:

In the Marine Corps we overcleaned our rifles. A super-strong emphasis was put on constantly keeping them spotless. That said, we never cleaned the inside of the gas tubes.

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Same as in the Army.

Like I said in my earlier post. The only time gas tubes were cleaned was with extended use of blanks. We shot a lot of blanks during MOUT training and I saw a few gas tubes get clogged.

Always use a gas tube "guide" when cleaning it.

Sometimes but, only with shots of brake cleaner.

Todd.

taliv said:

ok that's kinda funny

but you should still use a bore guide on precision rifles.

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Glad someone got it

AR15 7.62x39- After shooting corrosive Vietnam era stuff. I attach a plastic tube to the gas tube and irrigate with warm soapy water with a 10cc syringe followed by brake clean spray can straw tube. Gunk runs out the muzzle pointed down. Then do the bore with Hoppes.

12Bravo20 said:

The only time gas tubes were cleaned was with extended use of blanks. We shot a lot of blanks during MOUT training and I saw a few gas tubes get clogged.

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Interesting. We shot an awful lot of blanks, too, and I’ve never seen or heard of a gas tube getting clogged because of it. I’m fairly certain that the pressure of a live round being fired would clear out any carbon fouling caused by blanks. But maybe that explains why blanks were so unreliable for us even when we got a good seal with the BFA: maybe our gas tubes were getting clogged and nobody knew it, and then when we shot it with live rounds it cleaned it out immediately so nobody noticed a problem.

I had several in an arms room of about 200 M16A1 that got so fouled that they did not function... these were rifles that saw a good bit of blank firing. The crud looked like lime and in the worse rifles we used the semi straightened wire from a spiral notebook to get the worst of it out. The Army saw fit to offer us gas tube length pipe cleaners that fit for some reason so I had the Armorer and a couple of "Seven days restriction to barracks and seven days of additional duties" guys clean each and every one.

No issues after that and scheduled for annual pipe cleaning

-kBob

Never have fired a blank in any of my AR’s, despite hundreds of thousands of rounds downrange. I guess if I buy a pop-can launching upper for some silly reason, I’ll know I have to buy some pipe cleaners, or back-up/replacement gas tubes.