i believe im in the right thread for this topic, if not i apologize in advance.

im doing my first AR build, and have found all the parts i need. just need some input on the upper i have chosen. its a Gibbs Arms side charging receiver, if anyone has had any experience with them, id like to know how they perform.

heres a link to the site: http://shop.gibbzarms.com/G4-Side-Charging-Upper-Receiver-G4UR.htm

I have one and am very happy with it.

Fit and finish are nice, haven't had any issue with function at all.
would recommend buying an extra cam pin at the time you order the upper because gibbz will charge you about at much for shipping as they do for the cam pin if you order separately.

If I decided to build another side charge upper I would not hesitate to buy another Gibbz.

I just bought 2 uppers, lowers and hand guards from them. A Set for me and my wife

I live here in Arizona so I stopped by and checked out their place. It was small but I was impressed.
Their products look amazing and I was impressed with the quality.
They had also just got in some of the bolt carriers they have made for them with the logo on them. I was a sucker and bought one in Nickel and one Nitrided.
They also have the ability to do cerakote in house so I had them coat my wife's parts in tactical grey and mine in flat dark earth.

I have my wife's 90% built with no assembly issues. I took pictures along the way and I will be posting the build here shortly. I will also post the a review once I have a chance to fire them.

Good to here they are making a good name for themselves & are diving into it with both feet. More suppliers is always a good thing. Thanks for the info.

My local vendor for NFA said that they told him they were the same & that NFA makes them for Gibbz. So for people researching it you can choose either & know you are getting a good product.

Well they took me out back and showed me their machines and they were machining the uppers. So pretty sure NFA doesn't make them for them.
It was pretty cool to watch! They have this probe thing that checks the features of every part before it machines them in the different positions to make sure they come out right.
I love to watch CNC machines.

Fairly certain that's backwards and Gibbz makes them for the dozen or so companies selling them.

Ok. If you saw them being made then NFA is feeding him a line because they were supposedly waiting on a shipment to come in on Friday & it wasn't making any sense to me if they made them why would they be waiting on anything except parts to possibly finish them out.

I was going to ask if you got to see anything behind the scenes, looks like you did. Maybe next time you go you can get some pics to explain their process. It would be cool to see!

Thanks for the input, greatly appreciated. Looking forward to receiving my NFA Gibbz upper!

Gibbz has CNC machines and at least one programmer.  
Ask and they can whip it up. They've made custom parts for members here before.

wow,so sounds like their a really reputable company with quality parts. thanks for all the replies everyone.

have you seen any barrel fitment issues with the upper, since it is not mil-spec?

My question is regarding the statement on their website about possible compatability with rails with anti-rotation tabs.

I wonder which ones they are referring to.



Good to know. I wonder how much they charge to cerakote uppers, lowers & HG's.

Not really an issue persay, but the barrel extension to upper fit was tight.  It needed a light coat of grease and a litte persuasion to get the barrel fully seated in place, however, I found this to be much preferrable to some of the sloppy loose uppers i've seen.    The barrel nut threads on the upper were also snug, especially with the billet Seekins barrel nut.    
Everything seemed to be machined to the Max Material Condition.    

At the end of the day it made for a very sweet shooting rifle.

I can tell you this, the Seekins BAR did have some fitment issues, as would any of them that have tabs that go on either side of the flat top rail on the upper.    The left side of the upper (on the right hand eject version of the G4) does protrude out to make up the slide area for the charging handle, and as such, kept the handguard from sliding fully into place.  I marked off the interfering area on the handguard with tape and very carefully  removed material from the handguard until it fit the upper and I was able to keep a little bit of the tab as well so it still has the anti rotation feature.
I knew I was going to Cerekote the handguard anyway so it wasn't a big deal.   Just some filing and sanding.    Everything looks like they were made for each other now.

I would agree. I would rather have it snug than loose. Also, as a quality upper, I would hope since they do all the machining in-house there would be no need to lap the upper...?




Ok, got it. Thanks for the heads up.

My plan was to use a 9" MI SSK rail to begin with & while it has anti-rotation tabs, as I am sure you know, those interlock with the barrel nut, not the upper itself. I didn't foresee any issues but I wanted to make sure for future purchases. I am thinking of using the 12" Aero Rail or their 13.25" lite rail Here to go with my 8.2" barrel once I get my Can stamp. I will be using a 1.6" x 6" Can on this upper so that should give me just about an inch of the can sticking out & with the angled rail it should look pretty sweet.

I was looking at their 10" rail but man that thing looks heavy compared to their lite ones...

They are coming out with a ultra lite version of their 10" rail. I just picked up my receiver set yesterday and saw a rack full in the white. I had my set cerakoted FDE. As you can see below I prefer the one with all the slots.

Very nice badger.

What is the narrowest ID on that rail?

I looked at that when I was looking for a side charge upper but I wanted ambi and went with the crosshill technology upper. I wondered about the little rail that slides out an inch or so past the back of the upper. I wondered if it would poke me in the eye or cheek. I wanted to be able  to charge from both sides so no matter which side I was shooting from I could charge it if needed and not move off the trigger.

THIS! I would love to build a badger clone on using this.

Any chance you could put up the weights of each piece?

I like the Crosshill ambi upper. Hadn't seen that before.

They say the largest suppressor you can fit inside the hand guard is 1.5" in diameter.

I will weigh each piece and get back to you.

What vice block are you using for that upper for assembly ?

These are the weights of the various parts according to my wife’s kitchen scale.
Upper = 12.8 oz
Lower = 9.9 oz
Mid Lite Hand guard body = 14.2 oz
Hand guard Mount with barrel nut = 3.3 oz.

Best-of-Bama,
I was kind of worried about the little rail poking me too, but I have my wife’s gun 90% together and I tried it and it seemed to be at least 1” away from my nose. I had my brother look at it while I was charging it and he said guessed  about 1.5” away.  
Good enough for me!

Dphill,
With their hand guard you don’t need a vise block, but when I asked them that they said when they custom build something for a customer that doesn’t use their hand guard they use the Magpul BEV block. They said the reaction rod would work too.

To install their hand guard I just used a big crescent wrench on the the hand guard mount and a crows foot/torque wrench on the install tool. I never had to touch the upper.
Let me tell you it was the easiest hand guard I have ever installed. They have pretty good instructions available for download on their website. It was a bit of a pain having to let the lock-tite cure overnight, but it was so nice not to have to torque the old barrel nut then find out the notch doesn’t line up with the gas tube port on the upper. Then worry while you over torque it to get the notch to line up.

Here it is



I originally wanted to use this receiver with a dedicated 22lr barrel and bolt. When I mocked everything up the door for the bolt carrier on the back of the receiver wouldn't close with the 22 bolt. I didn't want to modify anything. So I looked in my box of parts and I had everything but a barrel to build an upper. Imagine that so I picked up a barrel