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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - FN Upper (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 5/24/2006 12:32:54 PM EDT
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I cannot find a quick answer to this: Who makes the FN uppers and how is the quality? Everytime I search for FN I get a lot of FAL stuff. Thanks. |
FN only manufactures for .mil contracts.
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Since you inquired about thier uppers, I am assuming you found one for sale and are curious about their quality. FN has been making M16A2/A3/A4's for the government for years, and continue to make the majority of rifles for the government, while Colt forcuses on carbines. Thier quality is excellent, despite being the lowest bidder on the contract. Provided a weapon meets or excedes the military specifications in assembly/parts, it shouldn't really matter who makes it. FN's quality is excellent, but isn't any better than a top tier civilian manufacture, as these companies are contracted to make "M16's" for many agencies and foriegn governments. FN is prohibited from selling weapons/components on the civilian market, so any FN components on the civilian market are suspect at best. Since they are prohibited from being sold, some FN components are seconds, or parts which couldn't pass muster and were rescued from the trash heap and sold. If they aren't seconds, then they were diverted*stolen* from FN or the government and it wouldn't be wise to posess. More often than not, people label an upper FN and it turns out to be made by J&T or similar....FN will have casting marks specific to thier rifles, though I can't recall exactly what they are. I personally wouldn't want to own a second, or stolen government property. Stolen 12 round Mk23 magazines got some people in hot water a few years back...Forget about it, and buy an equal/superior upper from a civilian manufacture like CMMG. |
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FN uppers are forged, so they have no casting marks. Also, only their M16 parts are banned from civilian sale, due to a manufacturing contract with Colt. FN is not supposed to sell to civilians based on a legal contract, so I find the "factory seconds" comment hard to believe. JMO, but questioning FN's quality is like spitting into the wind. |
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FN is prohibited from selling assemblies and components, but DRMO can sell ANYTHING that's been turned in. I have a feeling that there are a few (and I mean FEW) complete FN uppers that got turned in (by mistake, to hide ordering too many, whatever...) and eventually sold through DRMO. Parts could be easier to find turned in-an armorer doesn't give a rat's tail who made parts he shouldn't have, he just wants to get back to the authorized levels. Then there are the "not really FN" items, which are probably much more common. Can't say much about how to tell the difference...except that they're going to be cheap and lesser quality. |
| i also bought a 16" A2 upper from a company and was told it was FN. i have no reason not to believe them, if it was illegal why would they confess. the only mark on the upper i have seen is a keyhole emblem. it shoots fantastic, is top-notch quality, and i love FN products, they always have been a quality manufacturer. |
Three years ago Tweak e-mailed FN and received this reply:
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You need to quit acting like a Goddamn parrot and stupidly repeating everything you read on the internet. The "factory reject" idea is a myth and a stupid one at best. They are only allowed to sell to the government but the government can turn around to sell to anyone they want. Same thing with the Matech BUISs. Sure, they only sold them to Mil and LEO but those purchasers can do whatever they want with them... |
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You apparantly are the parrot, since the tone of this post seems to be supporting my position. I don't presume to know all of the ways that FN components make it to the market, I only attempted to offer a possible answer, which unless you personally work at FN Mfg, you are in no position to dispute. Watching GI Factory doesn't make you an expert on FN. A local operation bought several FN marked 1/7 twist govt. profile 20 inch barrels, all were unusable and out of spec. They were turned into a really cool table. So, if these were seconds then all of thier barrels are this badly out of spec? I think not...I would be curious to learn your actual hands on experience with FN products, not some mystery upper someone told you was FN to take your money. Your comparison with Matech is not apt. They may restrict thier product to LEO/mil only, but more often than not, they will have a supply chain of distributors/dealers/wholesalers which can stray from the companies policy and sell them to whomever. Anyone who has ever bought a box of TAP or Winchester Rangers knows how easy this restriction is to circumvent. FN Mfg doesn't exist in the civilian sector, thus doesn't have a network of dealers/distributors etc. Their products go from thier factory to the end user. Its not like your local LEO can order a M16 from FN and sell it to you. A machine gun sold only to the military is a little different than a company who makes sights arbitrarily restricting thier products.*adding LEO/.gov restricted to your product is the greatest marketing schem ever* In any event, I gave a few possible explainations of how FN products could make it to civilian hands. Every time I go to a gun show and look at an upper whos manufacture is unknown, its always made by FN. Probably not. FN's name is attached to every mystery upper/component and the less intellegent believe. I also mentioned that some people steal government property and sell them to the public, which is the only way one could get a real FN component that isn't a knockoff or a second. If you remember, I compared it to the Mk23 12 round magazines, which were stolen from the govt and sold to Mk23 owners during the ban. If you have a brand new, varifyable FN component, it was probably stolen/diverted at some point, or its a part which was rescued from the scrap heap or used up by a unit and destined for the trash bin until someone saved it. You would be better off "parroting" because maybe then you would have a little better information. |
| I'm at work right now with my issued FN M16A2. In front of the rear sight, on the right side, it is marked, "F K". The "K" is a little lower than the "F". The color is not ar dark as my RRA, but not as grey as early M16A1's. The front sight is marked "F (RI) 10". The barrel is marked, "FNMI 5.56 NATO 1/7". I would take a picture, but I don't have one at work. There are two others here, also marked exactly the same way. |
Me too. Like you, I wonder. dvo |
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Ryno- No, I did not get my information from watching GI factory. GI factory made no mention of what happens to seconds or what does not. I'm not taking anything from GI factory to make my point. It's been an ongoing topic on these boards for years about the legitimacy of FN uppers in civilian hands. Time and time again it's agreed that assuming they are all factory seconds is just stupid and there is no reason to believe they are inferior in any way to any other rifle. It sounded to me like you were just repeating the same crap that everyone hears as rumor when they first join this site. It seems to be a right of passage- there are certain things that the newer guys hear and believe and then have to be untaught. I don't know how it happens but it happens. I used to do the same thing. As a side note and before you or anyone else brings it up, I'm not using my post count to prove I know everything. 
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So just where the hell do they come from then. Eeryone who wants to say that the FN parts are real, and came from legitimate sources (and this applies to Matec sights too) keeps parroting the same crap about how they have dealer who could have sold them, or that the .gov sold them off, or some LEO agency sold them off. But NEVER can show this actually happening. BTW police departments mostly have stopped selling firearm parts in most regions of the country. Too much bad press and liberal, appointed chiefs. So again, just where do these parts come from then? My GUESS is that many of the "FN" uppers are just bought unmarked then the FNMI is stamped on them. |
| When I was getting ready to deploy our CATM folks had dozens of uppers and were replacing the uppers we had with the new ones. It wouldn't supprise me one bit if bunches of these walked off. Just like what happened with the M16 uppers about two years ago, when the AF converted M16's to A2's. Thousands of the older M16 uppers didn't make it all the way to DRMO. I know first hand of a Security Forces member who was helping convert the M16's to A2's who helped himself to an old upper. |
the keyhole is Cerro Forge. Colt also uses cerro forged uppers, as well as do many quality AR manufacturers. |
Will consult TBR II tonite. |
Probably the same guy I saw at a gun show in Jackson, MS in Dec. 2003. He had a table full of uppers that, IIRC, were marked "FN". I may be fuzzy on the details of the markings but not what he told me. I can distinctly remember him telling me that they were made by the "current manufacturer of M16s for the military". I believe the price tag on an upper with B/C/CH was around $450. I wanted one but at the time I was saving my green for an M1A, which I bought the following week. I'm glad I bought the M1A.
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| I think the original question was are FN uppers good quality…I can answer because I have one and I also live just a few miles from the plant here in SC and have been in the plant and seen their work first hand. They are very good quality. I would however use them on FN or Colt lowers, they do not seem to like to work on Bushy or RRA. And yes they do only sell to the military/LEO. They turn out tons and tons of M16A2s every day and they do not sell to the public. You might run into some uppers that an agency has sold or by some other means. The lowers made here in SC you won’t run into because they don’t mass produce semi auto, tons and tons of three round burst. So back to the original question…. FN is good stuff if you can find it. |
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GH, Yea, DM is behind the times. When I went to Iraq in 2003, I rolled acress the border with an M16, not the A2, and the serial number was ~75,000. When I went to Haiti in 2004, I was again issued an unconverted rifle. However, mid-2004 is when DM started converting the rifles. I'm only talking about the rifles we deploy with that are stored at Base Supply. The Security Forces have had the converted A2's since I arrived here in '99. |
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From many hours of cleaning my issue FN made M16A4 I can tell you that the bolt, carrier and extractor are marked with an "F", at least on mine. The upper has an FK forge code. Again, this is my particular weapon, others may be marked diffrently. Oh, and the barrel is marked "FNMI" infront of the regular caliber/twist info. mrf2 |
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Again, I don't presume to know all the ways that one could get a restricted item, I just offered a few likely possibilities. Also, if all FN barrels are as messed up as the ones that we had, then I doubt they would continue to make anything for the government, which lends credence to some FN products on the civilain market being subpar. I have no doubt that there are brand new, mint condition FN components in civilian hands. If you remember, I mentioned the Mk23 12 round magazines which appeared during the ban. They weren't seconds from HK, just stolen government property. You seem very defensive about this issue, perhaps you own some "FN" components? If so, it doesn't mean you are dumb for buying them, or the parts you have are junk. I have no idea... From what I have heard or seen, many of the FN parts on the market are out of spec/seconds or not FN at all. The real FN parts are undoubtibly stolen/diverted, in which case I would rather have the seconds. Bottom line, FN parts are prohibited from being sold to civilians, so if civilians have them, there is definatly some funny business going on somewhere. If you have a source to get real FN Mfg parts/components, I will take a SCAR-H, Mk46 Mod 0 and a Para Saw. In any event, a persons post count has no relation to a persons actual knowledge/experience. I would have thousands of posts and an account started in 2001 if I had retired sooner. IIRC, DocGKR doesn't have nearly as many posts as some of the whores around here, so does that mean because he doesn't post ten times a day like Markm that he doesn't know anything? All your post count proves is your abundance of free time, nothing more. |
Thanks for sharing that info. I would be real nice to get some pics of the upper and barrel markings. |
I've got some pics, I'll try to post them tonight. |
All of the FN made M16A2 and M16A4's that I've seen are marked on the barrel. |
| I owned a barrel marked exactly as the one above, and really never thought it was anything special. I traded for it on the EE, and didn't put that many rounds through it before I traded it to someone else. I currently have an upper that's supposedley FN, but I'm not sure about any markings. I'll check tonight! |
Yep. if a dealer tells you its an FN upper it really means he has no F'n idea who made in. meaning its likely a JT/Wilson/Model-One product. |
The deal is that the US Govt. bought a licence agreement from Colt for the M16 series back in 1967. While the Government has the TDP to the M16 series and can set others up to manufacture them (H&R, GM, and FN are the only ones to date), there are many restrictions. One of the restrictions is that anyone the US Govt. contracts with to build their M16's are not allowed to make them for anyone else. This is why the US Govt. is the only M16 customer FN has. The US Govt. is also not allowed to surplus M16 components to the general public. The reason Colt put these restrictions in the licence agreement is that future sales of their rifle could be damaged by having to compete with other manufactures who had been given Colt's TDP by the US Govt. A TDP that Colt's paid cash for, and has spent millions perfecting. Also dumping surplus parts could hurt Colt sales. Make Sense? Anyhow, these provisions of the licence agreement are regularly violated, and parts do get out. Colt has complained about it in the past. All this could have been avoided if the US Army would have simply marched into Colt's and taken the TDP. Tensions over Colt's TDP were so high at one point the US Army considered doing just this. Note that TDP is dealt with from the get go on modern contracts, like the SCAR and the SASS. |
| yeppur, mine has the keyhole too. maybe if all the FN uppers being sold to civilians are like marked, we're onto something. with just a few true manufactures' making lots of different "brands", i think it could still be possible our's is actually a FN upper, maybe just sold before it arrived at the SC plant. |
I will go with that, being that "FN" is slang for "I have no idea what this is". |
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All this is great info. Reason I asked the question originally was that I bought a rifle with a DPMS lower and what was supposed to be a FN upper. And it came with an ACOG TA31F sight. So what I am going to do is keep the sight and sell the rifle, but I will not ever misrepresent anything I sell. I do not want anyone else to feel like they were "screwed" like I was. The information received here has been invaluable. But, I still do not know how to adverstise the rifle for sale. The receiver has the raised "Keyhole" in the casting but what would you call the upper if you were selling??????? |
Is it just an stripped upper or a barreled receiver? If its barrelled the Brl should be marked. If its just a receiver than just decribe it by type. A1,A2,A4,M4 ect. |
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I will advertise it as an A-4 flat top upper with "1-9" stamped on the barrel. No carry handle. It is a complete upper. With so many people building and customizing their AR's today I think I will sell the upper and lower separately. Thanks again for all the info and pictures. |
[ARCHIVED THREAD] - FN Upper (Page 1 of 2)
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