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Posted: 6/5/2005 4:48:32 PM EDT
| how often should i be cleaning the bolt assembly on my AR? i have put about 400-500 rounds through it so far. I wipe the bolt down each time as best i can, but i have yet to take it apart and fully clean it. Is this bad? |
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www.ar15.com/content/guides/maintenance/ Every time you take the thing out to shoot, it should be cleaned. Also, use BreakfreeCLP to clean and lube the rifle. Only the bore should be cleaned with copper solvent. |
| After every shoot I break down my ARs and strip the BC assembly. Carrier, firing pin, FP retainer pin, cam pin, and bolt. Everything gets a good scrub with CLP. I then hit the parts with Gun Scrubber. Once dry I lube the heck out of the parts and assemble. Works every time and I have never had any issues. gets the BC group very clean and free to do what it was created to do. Of course the upper and lower halves get their share of cleaning as well as the chamber/bore. |
| You really need to break that bolt & carrier down as far as possible. You'll notice on the back/bottom of the bolt it gets wicked carbon build up and needs to be removed, a good scrubbing will get it, if not use a dental tool. Also inside the carrier will get build up also, take a small flash light and look down where the bolt goes and you'll see build up on the back edges. They also make a tool for scrubing this also. This is a very important part of the AR system and it does require frequent maintenance or it will fail. |
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It is only bad if you are using foreign made ammo with corrosive priming and cheap propellent. Also tracers are bad, regardless of country of origin. There is too much tradition from the military which causes a neurosis motivating those to overclean their rifles. Part of this is from the poor conditions in which an unproven propellent was used in a jungle combat envrionment. So, if you are using current, domestic ammunition and store your rifle in a controlled envrionment, cleaning should not be a problem even if you store a dirty rifle for a few weeks to a few months. It isn't going to rust into a pile of shavings from the inside out. In fact, your skin is more corrosive than propellent/priming residues. I can get well over 1000 rounds before I feel the need for a complete cleaning. If that takes 6 months, so be it. I wipe down the steel parts that I touch, run a copper solvent soaked brush 10 times through the bore and patch it dry, cleaning the chamber with a double patch on a jag. That is it. When I get ready to clean the gas system, all I worry about is removing the carbon on the back of the bolt. Nothing gets shoved into the carrier, carrier key, flash hider or gas tube. Powder solvent soak for 30 minutes and wipe down cleans it good enough. I make sure the extractor groove is clean of chips and the bolt face is clean. Total time is under an hour. |
I missed that, thanks. I have a bad habit of letting that area get neglected. I clean it maybe very three times I clean the rifle. It doesnt seem to cause any problems though. One of my other ARs I let go for a whole year (the bolt rear and down inside the carrier that is). Still no reliability issues with that either. |
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Just soak the bolt and carrier in some Slip 2000 Carbon Cutter for 10-20 min. pull it out and wipe it clean. Carbon Cutter will break that carbon down very quickly. I use it in my bores also. You MUST go back and re lube after using this product becaues it strips all the oil protection from the steel. Using the Slip CLP also helps with the next cleanup. It dose not allow the carbon to stick to the steel after it has been applied and bonds with the steel parts. Check it out. Heres a link to the web http://slip2000.com/carboncutter.html |
I don’t call it tradition, more like valuing your personal equipment. My AR means a lot to me and I hold high standards when it comes to my weapons cleaning. Like any other tool, if you don’t take care of it, it will not take care of you. The military trains personal like that for a reason, some folks just never grasp that reason. |
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