Am I the only person who likes Rock River Arms?

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The "chart" to me is the bare minimum. Plenty of rifles exceed the benchmark Colt sets. But too many Ar builders are skipping steps that are simple and easy to do. This is a giant red flag that they aren't properly concerned about quality. Even if it deosn't get much use, it still may find itsself in a home defense role. Anyone that truely cares to build an excellent AR pegs every box on the "chart" or maybe misses one spot, it's such well known info now that they're purposely skipping steps in my opinion.

Park under the front base helps reduce corrosion and leakage.

M4 ramps are needed for 6.8spc, 6.5, .50 etc builds, and are a darn good thing to have with 5.56 so why not use them?

Cheap BCG's and springs kill plenty of AR's in extended shooting periods.

Gas key needs staked and Threadlocked IMO.


Hobby guns do not apply. Use whatever you want.

When RRA is within a few bucks of better rifles why would I bother?
I can build a BCM Middy for $1100ish
 
No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't see the words "Rock River" anywhere on that blown AR-15. The only thing I could make out was the picture of some kind of horse.
Click to expand...

Yup, there is certainly a horse on that rifle. :D


Yep guns can blow up when bad ammo is used. The above KB was a result of XM193. Shooter was fine thankfully.
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I don't recall that article saying anything about bad ammo. Not saying you're wrong, but do you have a link for that?
 
I can remember when people used to regularly recommend Armalite, Bushmaster, Colt and RRA. It was good advice. At some point in the past 10 years, someone came up with the idea of a "Carbine Course." In said "Carbine Course" people would be firing some 2,000 rounds over the course of two days with minimal maintenance in between long, arduous strings of abuse. Surprise, Surprise, problems arose. Of course, this happened long before ammo hit $0.50/round.

In the real world, there are soldiers out there who go out into a real combat armed with an M series rifle and ~300 rounds of ammunition. The Weekend Warriors are the real deal, however, and will balk at any rifle that chokes after 1,000 rounds without maintenance/cleaning. :rolleyes:

What is wrong with this picture?

FWIW, I have an early RRA rifle that has not had a single malfunction in several thousands of rounds. It cost me $700 back then. It was a good rifle long before people started making spreadsheets. It is still a good rifle today. It has proven to be reliable past the round count of the average combat load. It has done so time and time again. Then again, I'm not a soldier, not a LEO, not a Security Guard at the local arcade, not an Ultimate Fighter, so what do I know? All I know is that my 20+ years of firearms experience has taught me to place faith in my own experience and what I have seen, and to leave the spreadsheets and Ultimate Weekend Warrior demands at home.

I have a hard time believing that such a rifle is a poor choice for home defense or a SHTF situation. If your plan is to hunker down in a SHTF scenario with an AR15 and the intent of shooting thousands and thousands of rounds without maintenance, then, my friend, you need a Plan B!
 
Jeez. And to think I had one of my threads slammed shut for being a duplicate post when the search function failed to show any previous posts..

What I can't believe is why this thread is still running. Moderators?
 
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The article definetly stated the rifle was a Colt 6920 and the ammo was factory XM193. What those pics have to do with this thread, I just don't know. But way to ruin a sorta somewhat entertaining thread with all the name calling, non fact or persoonal experience based posts and the misleading pictures. Good job, High Roaders?
 
@ Mags

The point of the pics is that even the best can fail. Not really a slam on Colt or anything (I do believe they make a higher QA/QC rifle), but all the ragging on RRA because they aren't Colt or Bravo or whatnot seems a bit rough.

I wasn't trying to mislead anyone with the pics. They are clearly not of a RRA, so I'm not sure how they are misleading?


There is still the possibility as Artiz indicated that the Colt in that pic was damaged by the ammo and not a fault of the manufacturer. Still waiting for some confirmation from him (or anyone for that matter) on that.
 
Thanks for the clarification Boba, you just didn't post any text with the pics besides the link. I thought you were trying to say the Colt was a kaboomed RRA.
 
I am really to tired to go track down the original thread but that KB was discusses at length here, on ar15.com and m4c.net. A number of people discussed the issues with XM193 and how it had lead to similar KBs in the past. In retrospect I may be incorrect that it was "proven" to be the ammo. But that was the general consensus at the time. I am not sure if he ever heard back from Colt with an official report.
 
They make a fine rifle, though there are many on the used market they still bring big money, and nobody makes a better factory match trigger.

My goodness, that photo is going to break many a Colt fan heart.
 
Conclusion to the Colt Kaboom!

This thread got me looking up AR kabooms and I stumbled across this conclusion to the Colt kaboom!

http://sigforum.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=674608412&f=630601935&m=6850033002&r=6850033002#6850033002

The verdict is in, and as most had guessed the verdict is that the cause of the catastrophic failure was from an ammo defect. At this point I'm just glad that the lower is salvageable. Other than having the bulge fixed and finding a new complete upper, I'm not sure what my next move is. I have had some tell me that I should go after the ammo manufacturer. While I haven't ruled it out, I know that the cost of the repairs aren't worth the hassle. Still some point to the fact that I could have been injured and they say that I have a responsibility to others who might be injured due to bad ammo from this manufacturer (Prvi Partizan). I just need to think this through and decide if I agree with that or not. Anyway, here is the official (mildly redacted) Colt Manufacturing Engineering Exam Report.

coltengineeringexamrepo.jpg
coltengineeringexamrepow.jpg
Click to expand...


So apparently it was the ammo, though it was not Federal and was Prvi Partizan.


Good to know what really happened.
 
IMHO, All it matters is USA Men Hockey beating Canada!
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The reason why our guys can't play good hockey, and this happens every olympic year, is because they have never played together, three weeks before the olympics they still didn't know who would be in the team.
The real hockey team is the women's team, who beat the crap out of your team this week, and yours was dehydrating itself because of accute crying. :D
IMHO, we don't like to be 3rd, we like to be first, and look at that, Germany beat you too, but we beat them...


And that blown up Colt is the reason of extremely bad ammo, the same results will be achieved by shooting any AR-15 just after taking it out of water without shaking the water out.
 
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"You realize Colt got a larger part of that contract as did another company. RRA didn't exactly give the DEA the same guns you can buy off the shelf. I have also heard there are some issues with the guns they purchased but haven't seen data on that yet."


You realize that DEA didn't buy one single Colt rifle under that contract, don't you? People who pop that contract out, don't understand how federal contracting works. That contract was an option to buy that many Colt rifles at that price, not a deal to actually do it. DEA never optioned it (or the similar one with Sigarms).

And, the FBI, and BATFE also purchased lots of RRA's under the DEA contract with RRA, since as DOJ agencies, they can piggy back off each other's contracts.

However, DEA continued to buy select fire Colt .223 rifles under a different contract until recently, for OCONUS use, but has suspended all of those purchases in favor of purchasing select fire LWRC .223 rifles.

This may make Colt owners like you mad, but it is the truth. And, the reasons why a law enforcment agency that probably owned more Colt guns than any other one in the US, would do this, would probably make you more mad, so I want get into them here.
 
For the record I don't have a single colt. So don't think I talk about this stuff to defend my chosen company.

Please enlighten us with you supposed reasons why they would choose RRA carbines. Don't claim to have actual knowledge of something and then act like you are to important to actually share that knowledge.
 
The testing for the DEA contract is outlined in this article which discussed the RRA DEA Carbine.

As for the claim that the RRA DEA Carbine was not the same as an off-the-shelf RRA rifle, that is not true. Immediately following that contract RRA made the very same rifle available for civilian sales. There was nothing different about the rifles delivered to the DEA that was not present in the DEA models sold to civies.
 
^^ RRA builds two categories of rifles. They build rifles for the government, and they build rifles for civilians, and they are not built to the same specs, using the same parts.
 
Don't know who told you that, but it's simply not true. Over the years I've had the chance to talk with the Lawsons on separate occasions and I have it on good authority that there are NOT two separate lines.

Specifically, during the ban, the only difference was that civilian versions did not have collapsable stocks, flash hiders, and bayonet lugs. All other specs were the same, and parts were sourced from CMT (bolts, carriers, uppers and lowers), Wilson (4140 CL barrels), Hogue (grips), and used RRA's 2-stage trigger. All the rest of the "chart" ticket items were the same.

If you have a source of info that shows otherwise,please share it with us. :rolleyes:
 
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He has a habit of down playing some brands and no doubt sells other brands, does it on other postings also...
 
you're not the only one, I have a tricked out RRA LAR-9 A4, and love the thing. It shoots great and being a 9mm it's not as expensive to practice. Not only do they make great firearms, they also have a lot of accesories to choose from. One day I'd like to get my hands on one of the 1911's a make, i've never seen or held one before.
 
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