AR-15 - JT Upper???

[Werewolf]

Was shopping around for an AR-15 yesterday.

Found one at the gunshop I frequent. It had a DPMS lower with a JT upper. 20" Barrel with flash suppresor A2 version (fixed carry handle). Felt kinda heavy (last time I picked up an M-16 was 33 years ago and back then they were a 5.5 pound rifle not the 7.5 to 8 they run now). Used with a price of $685.

Anyway I've never heard of JT - who are they and are they any good when it comes to making uppers.

Does a JT upper go well with a DPMS lower?

Is $685 a good price.

The shop owner said if I bought it I could take it out and shoot if for a couple of weeks and if it wasn't right he'd take it back in and tune it. Tune it? How do you tune an AR???

Comments greatly appreciated...

 

[DMK]

It's probably heavy because it's a heavy barrel. Bushmaster has a Govt. A2 style barrel that's lighter like your M-16 had. I think the only way to get it is to assemble your upper from parts though, although Bushmaster might mount the barrel to their upper for you.

Is $685 a good price.

You could build a nice Rock River for that, even if you just bought a complete lower, a complete upper and put them together.


$390 for upper, $216 for lower = $611 Check out http://www.adcofirearms.com/

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Probably http://www.jtdistributing.com/

They do kit guns basically - they don't actually make any parts that I am aware of, they buy them from various subcontractors and assemble them into uppers or rifles, so this gun was probably put together with J&T parts on a DPMS lower.

That assembled upper runs $289 brand new from J&T, so you are getting charged $396 for a used DPMS lower. Also consider that the JT Upper is used and that sounds too high to me unless there are accessories there that make up the difference and weren't mentioned. There is also the question of who built what and did they know what they were doing?

Also as DMK mentioned, that is a full length heavy-barrel profile not a government profile on the upper - the upper alone weighs 6.5lbs on that rifle, which probably explains why it feels heavy.

 

[Nightcrawler]

I don't know if ANYBODY is making an M16A1 barrel, and I'm sure no one is making that barrel with a post-ban upper.

I've carried an M16A1; it's a light, and handy rifle, more portable than these silly 16" heavy-barreled things to come about recently. The A2 is fine, too, in that regard, but the standard postban barrel weight is heavier than that even, making a 20" AR-15 clone weigh something along the lines of 8.5 pounds.

Kind of silly for something with aluminum receivers, don't you think?

As was mentioned, I've heard Bushmaster is making an M16A2 weight barrel, but they don't sell it as part of an upper.

These days, if you want a light 20" AR-15 clone, you're prettymuch going to have to buy a pre-ban or build it up yourself. All the rage now is M4 lookalikes anyways; those sell, so that's what the builders build, complete with fake, non-collapsing stocks, just so they look like the military rifles. *shrug* Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

 

[DMK]

The A2 is fine, too, in that regard, but the standard postban barrel weight is heavier than that even

When you say "standard postban barrel", you mean heavy barrel right? Because I don't see how a post ban A2 Govt. barrel with a bare muzzle would be heavier than a pre-ban A2 Govt. barrel with a bayo lug and flash suppressor.

 

[DMK]

I don't know if ANYBODY is making an M16A1 barrel, and I'm sure no one is making that barrel with a post-ban upper.

I'm not absolutely sure of the barrel profile, but it looks like Fulton Armory has an A1 barrel available on a post ban upper:

http://www.fulton-armory.com/GEN_II.htm#LegacyUppers

 

[Nightcrawler]

you mean heavy barrel right? Because I don't see how a post ban A2 Govt. barrel with a bare muzzle would be heavier than a pre-ban A2 Govt.

Almost all postban barrels are heavy barrels. Every 20" commercial rifle I've seen has a heavy barrel that gets FATTER under the handguards, whereas the M16A2 barrel does not. The bull barrels are fat from breach to muzzle.

If anybody is making a postban rifle with the exact same barrel profile as the M16A2, that's news to me.