Experience with Bear Creek Arsenal?

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Sour Kraut

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Does anyone have experience with products from Bear Creek Arsenal? I frequently buy from PSA, but Bear Creek seems to have some great prices on uppers and other items. Have no idea about the value/quality proposition. Comments?
 
Does anyone have experience with products from Bear Creek Arsenal? I frequently buy from PSA, but Bear Creek seems to have some great prices on uppers and other items. Have no idea about the value/quality proposition. Comments?
There's a very good reason that the low dollar AR companies are as cheap as they are, and it's not because they're extra charitable.
 
I have first-hand knowledge of two Bear Creek uppers. One needed an extractor and headspace adjustment uppn arrival. Now it just runs, and the other has always just run.

It seems they inhabit the low price-point end of the market, which is fine and good for my purposes. If you want a pistol (with pistol-like accuracy), I would buy BC. If you want a carbine and you can stretch a bit to a PSA upper, I would. I think PSA's QC and barrels are much better.
 
A friends 3 different ones that run fine, two 6.5 grendel and a 223 wylde, I have a 24" 6.5 grendel that shoots well with an older lower and a reddot, I'm still looking for a scope. Each time shipping was about 1 week
 
Barrel with short chamber neck requires handloaded ammo only. Only paid 50 dollars. Contacted BC by email by no response yet and that was 2 months ago. Barrel is nitrided and no one in town has a carbide reamer.

SC
 
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Some barrels are good. Some barrels not so good. Seems for the last two to three years, whomever is crowning the barrels, is using a dull edge or pushing too fast to get done. There seems to ALWAYS be metal pushed into the bore.

Couple of chambers with carryover.

HIGHLY recommend looking IN the bore with a borescope.
 
Some barrels are good. Some barrels not so good. Seems for the last two to three years, whomever is crowning the barrels, is using a dull edge or pushing too fast to get done. There seems to ALWAYS be metal pushed into the bore.

Couple of chambers with carryover.

HIGHLY recommend looking IN the bore with a borescope.
 
I put together a side charging upper with all parts from bc. The first two times out it had failures to feed correctly. I think I fixed it but honestly when I grab my stuff to go shooting I leave that one at home. I recently swapped barrels from two uppers I had and put the bc Barrel on my son's AR with a 22 conversion kit and have not shot it yet.

My PSA stuff has never let me down and I tend to go in that direction because I know the stuff I have from PSA works. Was it me or was it bc I don't know at this point so I'm not going to say anything bad about them. They definitely have some neat looking stuff and a good price and the barrel guarantee is pretty cool.
 
There's a very good reason that the low dollar AR companies are as cheap as they are, and it's not because they're extra charitable.
When you think about it, that sounds ironic coming from someone with the username of bearcreek.........o_O
I've no complaints about their stuff. I plan on buying myself a little birthday present from them soon.
 
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I have a couple or three, maybe more if the scuttlebutt is true that bca makes the uppers for midway that they sell under the a.r.stoner brand. I've had good luck with mine, very accurate and haven't had any problems yet. I've run a couple hard and put them up wet and they come back for more. While I haven't tortured tested them like on a u-tube video, the round count on two of them is in the three thousand plus range. So, the price was right and I'm happy, my two cents.
 
When you think about it, that sounds ironic coming from someone with the username of bearcreek.........o_O
I know, it is. ;) Lots of creeks around the country named after bears. There's probably at least one in every state. I started using that name long before I'd ever heard of Bear Creek arsenal.
I've no complaints about their stuff. I plan on buying myself a little birthday present from them soon.
Most of us cannot afford to actually test reliability and durability of an AR in a short period of time. The vast majority of AR owners never fire their rifles enough to actually legitimately test them. Because of that, I don't generally put much stock in statements of folks on a forum who say they've "had X product for X amount of time and it's worked fine". That doesn't mean anything unless the person is someone I trust knows what to look for and/or, they specify how the gun was actually used, number of rounds in a given period of time, level of abuse it was subjected to, etc.
 
I have a 10.5" in 7.62x39 and a 7.5" in 5.56. The 7.62x39 was sticky to chamber on cheap steel for the first couple mags, but a little lube and break in seems to have fixed it. Both run like tops now.

I have a 2 PSA uppers, and one colt. BCA and PSA are not colt quality, but for $200 I'm perfectly happy with them functionally. Hard to go wrong at that price point.
 
Something else to think about. Generally speaking, manufacturing companies in the US who hire illegal aliens to save a buck on labor costs are not known to produce high quality products. There may be exceptions but that's generally the case. https://www.ammoland.com/2019/02/ic...er-raids-on-bear-creek-arsenal/#axzz66IcNsQUn
I know, it is. ;) Lots of creeks around the country named after bears. There's probably at least one in every state. I started using that name long before I'd ever heard of Bear Creek arsenal.
Most of us cannot afford to actually test reliability and durability of an AR in a short period of time. The vast majority of AR owners never fire their rifles enough to actually legitimately test them. Because of that, I don't generally put much stock in statements of folks on a forum who say they've "had X product for X amount of time and it's worked fine". That doesn't mean anything unless the person is someone I trust knows what to look for and/or, they specify how the gun was actually used, number of rounds in a given period of time, level of abuse it was subjected to, etc.
I know, it is. ;) Lots of creeks around the country named after bears. There's probably at least one in every state. I started using that name long before I'd ever heard of Bear Creek arsenal.
Most of us cannot afford to actually test reliability and durability of an AR in a short period of time. The vast majority of AR owners never fire their rifles enough to actually legitimately test them. Because of that, I don't generally put much stock in statements of folks on a forum who say they've "had X product for X amount of time and it's worked fine". That doesn't mean anything unless the person is someone I trust knows what to look for and/or, they specify how the gun was actually used, number of rounds in a given period of time, level of abuse it was subjected to, etc.
There's a very good reason that the low dollar AR companies are as cheap as they are, and it's not because they're extra charitable.
I'm really not trying to be a dick here because you've brought up some good points, tho I believe they some may not be valid in this case.

Low cost can amount to lower quality in function (this case it's mostly cosmetic from my experience)

Most users won't ever ware out an AR, finding it's limit in reliability

Spending more CAN get you a better over all product (in this case I'd expect to spend double or more)


BUT, have you used any of the products, delt with them, or spoken to them at all?




My experience has been that they generally make/sell decent quality stuff. barrels can be rough (my newest is not), but are accurate.
Side chargers are blocky and heavy, and can have machine marks on the insides, but are dimensionally correct.
Handguards may have machining marks and be a different color than the reciever, but are straight enough for putting bus on.

over all my experience is positive, same with Anderson, and ATI Omnis, and Frontier, and a bunch of other "cheap o" brands and products.

As Bearcreek said, most of us arnt going to reach any sort of reliability/fatigue issue with an AR. Personally I'm more concerned with early failures which manifest within the "Average" users experience.
 
I have a few BCA parts in use, they work. I can't say I've put any of them through enough of a test to say they are capable of handling the worst you can throw at them but they haven't given me any reason to question them, so far. I have a 5.56 pistol that I've put at least a couple thousand rounds through at this point, no hiccups to note that weren't ammo related. I have a few of their barrels in 223/5.56 and even one on a 308 and they're plenty accurate. Every one making barrels is going to produce a dud every now n then. I have no experience with their handgun parts.
 
A buddy just purchased one in .50 Beowulf and so far its functioning fine. They did, however, install the dust cover spring incorrectly and it sticks up just a bit.

He also has one in .450 Bushmaster that shoots just fine.
 
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