Rock River UTE????

[Lawyerman]

I have my eye on one of these at a decent price. How well does the rail work and are you happy with yours?

 

[stevesmith7]

Well, I just got one of these uppers used from AR15.com.
Haven't shot it yet but observations so far:
With A2 buttstock I get perfect position with the iron sights.
I tried mounting a 3x9 rather small scope using rings just high enough to clear the rear sight and I still get a good position, not too high at all.
I think mounting larger optics might put you too high for my tastes as the rear of the scope is pretty close to the rear iron sight. You'd have to have very high rings to clear. A scope with very long eye relief might mount in front of the rear sight but I haven't tried this. They should have made the rear sight removeable.

Steve

 

[Lawyerman]

Thanks, that's something anyway. I had kind of thought that might be the case but for what I am paying it's a good deal. At the least it is a "basic" AR.

 

[stevesmith7]

Yea, I gave $350 with b/bc/ch for one that's basically new.
It's like having a flattop with a permanent riser mounted, but with
iron sights in the way. RRA's website had them priced well over $500.

Steve

 

[Zach S]

A scope with very long eye relief might mount in front of the rear sight but I haven't tried this.

Then you run into mounting problems since the rail is so short. You get enough eye relief and you only have room for one ring. I tried it with a few different scopes, but then lost interest in putting optics on it, so I havent toyed with it a lot.

The rail is too tall to mount a red dot on, well, you can mount the red dot but it blocks the iron sights. I bought my upper from ADCOFirearms.com and got the tac handle instead of the standard carry handle because I thought it would give me a little more flexabilty, and it was five bucks cheaper IIRC. Now that I have it, I dont care for it. I think I may actually have more options for mounting a scope with a standard carry handle. If the rail was longer would be better IMO, they do sell and extended rail however it didn't have a rear sight last time I looked. With the scout rail that has iron sights you get a full-length rail that runs over the handgaurd and mounts to a weaver gas block up front, I dont care much for that idea either mainly because of the way it looks. Luckily since mine is an A3 I can change my mind easily, however with the A2 UTE upper you dont have that option.

If I were to do it again I'd probably go with a standard carry handle or a Bushmaster A3 rear sight, or a simular one that will leave the rest of the rail exposed, I may wind up doing that to my carbine anyway, but at the moment I dont have any optics planned for it. I do plan on another A3 (9mm) in the future, and I plan on using an A1 or A2 rear sight simular to the BM sight linked above.

As I said, I havent toys with it a lot, and I'm sure I could figure something out if I was determined enough. I'm just not that determined.