AR-15 Maintenance: Field-strip, Clean and Lubricate an AR-15 | Gunsite Academy Firearms Training

alright time to talk about some ar-15 maintenance and technical tips and hints first thing on the list of things to do is give you a little note be careful when you have the firearm field stripped basic field stripping includes of course make sure that the firearm is unloaded we're going to ease the bolt forward and press out the rear takedown pin which separates the upper and lower receiver remove the bolt carrier group return remove the charging handle if we press out the forward pin we can separate the upper and the lower now immediately you do this you'll want to push these pins back in they're relatively fragile and if for some reason you drop the lower receiver it falls off the table there they can be damaged and require replacement take care when handling the bolt carrier once again not to drop it because the gas carrier key on the top of the bolt can be damaged if it's dropped onto a hard surface and that's a critical part that if you damage it you're probably going to require replacement safety tip the fire control mechanism has enough space in it that if a blown primer should get down inside there it can block various functions of the trigger group it may not allow the gun to fire it may get under the forward end of the trigger bar worse it may get under the rear end of the trigger bar which will prevent you from a putting the gun on safe and may allow the gun to go full auto fire or burst because the hammer is not able to be caught by the sear and may not get caught by the disconnect er so you want to inspect that area carefully for any debris and especially if you detect a blown primer on a fired case make sure that nothing is fallen down inside there no oil no lubrication goes down in the trigger group and this should be clean and dry you can spray it out with one of those spray type powder solvents or something like brake cleaner but don't put any lubrication in there because all it serves to do is attract powder fouling grit and dirt and make it stick to these machine surfaces which isn't helping anything there are a variety of magazines available right now most people tend to use the standard 30 round GI magazine we like the Magpul pmags we like the HK steel magazines the 20 round the old 20 round straight body aluminum are still good if you can find them all those work pretty well the important part is aluminum magazines are relatively speaking fragile you have to understand that they were designed to be discardable I think they were designed to be loaded used once and thrown away and being aluminum they are subject to being dented if dropped repeatedly aluminum doesn't rebend well once it's been bent and heat formed into a shape don't bend it again if the feed lips on your magazine get bent and it doesn't work just trashcan it it's no longer any good don't buy magazine lip forming tools and try and fix it the magazine is broken get rid of it another important safety note 2 2 3 & 5 5 6 are not the same cartridge they are not interchangeable both directions you can shoot two two three in a gun that is chambered for five five six you cannot or should not be shooting five five six heads stamped ammunition in a chamber that is two to three the throat lead and pressure on the cartridges is different and if you shoot five five six in a two to three gun there's a good possibility of blowing the gun up I ain't sending parts into orbit you really don't want to do that normally the barrel will be marked along the top upper surface and it will indicate here what the chamber is whether it's five five six NATO or whether it's two two three and it will also indicate the twist rate with a 1/7 a 1/9 or something similar if you find a little MP that indicates that the barrel has been magnetic particle inspected it has been proofed which is also a good idea the barrel extension is attached to the barrel during manufacture and once it's installed you can really only see the rear end of it and the receiver and that's where the bolt locking lugs fit into that area is subject to accumulation of debris and it's also subject to getting blown primers caught in the same fashion as the trigger group can so it's one of those areas that you want to blow out with some compressed air or wipe out with a q-tip when you're doing your regular maintenance there are two feed ramps built into the system there are also two styles there are the standard m16 feed ramps and then there are m4 feed ramps m4 feed Rams can be distinguished by the fact that they extend into the upper receiver metal itself the standard m16 feed ramps don't have an indent in the upper receiver the two are not directly compatible you can't put an four barrel into an m-16 upper receiver the step there it won't things aren't going to work well you also don't want to put an m16 barrel into an m4 receiver because the barrel is then going to overhang the feed ramp so be careful when you go to swap parts now the bolt assembly needs a certain amount of maintenance normally when we're doing cleaning on the rental guns I really just wipe the bolt assembly off real Oubre kate it and put it back into the gun if you're going to immediately fire the gun again that works perfectly fine there's not a lot of real detail cleaning that needs to be done to keep the gun running if you're going to store it however or if you're going to not use it for some length of time you'll want to remove the firing pin retaining pin be careful with that that's an often lost part because it's so small you may or may not need to tap the bolt to get the firing pin out the firing pin will accumulate some degree of fouling but most of that will just wipe off just like that once the firing pin is out the bolt cam pin can be rotated 90 degrees and pulled out of the side of the bolt itself and then the bolt will pull straight forward out of the bolt carrier now the bolt carrier the key to inspect are the two nuts at the top of the gas carrier key this key transmits gas down into the bolt carrier and makes the gun run and it is two parts it is screwed to the carrier body this is supposed to be staked at the factory are supposed to be punch marks here locking those screws in place this is an often overlooked item by many manufacturers they don't bother to stake this or they don't stake it very well and if these screws come loose and the bolt the gas carrier key wobbles then you're going to leak gas here and the guns not going to run very well so inspect this check this to see that it is tight there's no movement and that the staking is holding these screws in place and neither the screws are broken anything like that when it comes time to lubricate this and put it back in the gun there are four raised areas right here at the top on each side of the carrier key and then on the bottom edges of the bolt and you can tell that these are the friction areas because there's some shiny spots the Parker izing is been worn off of those areas because that's what's rubbing on the receiver that's where you put Lube there is no need to put lubrication on any part of the bolt back here at the rear or these grooves that are in the bolt for the forward assist or this surface there's no reason to put lubrication there all it's doing is contributing to fouling it will make more stuff stick to the bolt carrier so there's no reason to put anything on there the bolt itself consists of the extractor pinned to the side the bolt head with the lugs that lock and then at the rear of the bolt you have three gas rings the gas Rings form a seal much like the piston rings in the engine of your car and the gas is directed down the gas carrier down the carrier key into this area and pushes Volt the carrier to the rear thereby unlocking the bolt and allowing the whole assembly to come to the rear so these need to form a good seal so once you have wipe to all of this off the way you test your gas rings is to insert the bolt into the bolt carrier and dangling it over a soft surface right or a little bit over the table give it a wiggle back and forth like this hold it by the bolt head and shake it if your bolt falls off the bolt carrier falls off you need new gas rings the gas rings last on average three to five thousand rounds at which point they'll have lost enough tension in their spring to no longer form a good seal and they'll need to be replaced all you really do is reach in there with a fingernail peel them off and then wrap the new ones on fairly straightforward process the extractor spring is another where point and because the gas is directed right here against the base of the bolt the bolt head gets fairly hot in operation heat kills Springs so at about the same time you need to replace the gas rings you'll probably need to replace the extractor spring the extractor spring has easily gotten to by using the tip of the firing pin to press on the extractor retaining pin you'll probably need to apply a little force to the side of the extractor the extractor retaining pin will come off and then your extractor will come out the spring is retained on the extractor right it's slightly oversized and is a press fit into the hole I have installed a d-ring and that little rubber ring provides additional extractor tension it is an aftermarket part I highly recommend that will actually allow the gun to run even if there is no extractor spring in the gun if the spring is broken it will still work when replacing the extractor spring there is a small rubber buffer in the center of the spring replace the buffer at the same time that you replace the spring basically you're just going to need a pair of small smooth nose pliers grab the spring pull it off take the new spring press it into place you'll feel a little click as it goes on and then it'll be attached like this one is to the extractor press the extractor back in place put the pin back in and you're done this should be part of normal maintenance any operator of the gun should be able to do this as normal maintenance and you should keep in your kit spare extractor Springs spare extractor pins spare extractor spare firing pin retainer and a set of gas rings as these are normal wear parts and need a certain amount of replacement I don't worry too much about firing pins you don't often break them certainly the entire bolt head is rarely broken in a milspec type gun and the same thing goes for the bolt carrier key once the screws and the key is properly staked it's very seldom that you need replacement you're probably going to need to go to the armor to get that done anyway as we reassemble the gun and I go ahead and put the extractor and extractor pin back in when we go to put the bolt back into the bolt carrier a number of people will try to tell you that the little gaps in the rings need to be placed out of line they need to be turned you know 60 degrees to each other so the gaps aren't lined up that is untrue in point of fact the gun will run perfectly well with a single good gas ring installed the three rings are simply there for redundancy and the alignment of the gap is irrelevant while you are shooting the gun these will twist on the bolt anyway and at some point they will be aligned no matter what you do they are not going to hold in that position anyway so don't worry about it when you're cleaning it this back surface of the bolt you don't have to worry about getting every little bit of carbon off the back of that because it's a lot like the top of the piston in the engine of your car I'm sure you don't go out there and scrub the Pistons regularly the same thing applies here there's pretty much a fixed amount of fouling that's going to accumulate there and the rest of it is just going to fall off and flake off naturally anyway when we insert the bolt into the bolt carrier it only goes one way if you install it the other direction you won't be able to fit the cam pin in because the hole is tapered so you're going to need to insert it so that the extractor faces the small depression in the side of the bolt press that to the rear line up the cam pin hole so you can take the cam pin and reinsert it back into the bolt turn it 90 degrees so that the firing pin hole lines up drop the firing pin all the way into the bolt it must go all the way flush common problem here is not inserting the firing pin all the way and then placing the firing pin retainer in and what it does is holds the firing pin to the rear and then when you reassemble the gun the firing pin falls out the back pretty much jamming up the works very nicely and requiring a gunsmith to get the thing apart more often than not and the guns certainly not going to work and when properly installed the firing pin you should be able to hear it rattle back and forth and it shouldn't fall out of the old and the firing pin retainer should be flush with the side of the bolt the large end goes into the depression I've seen people install it from the other side normally you can't get it into the gun unless you use a lot of force I have seen it done lungs in on this side to get the bolt back into the gun you need to have the bolt head pulled all the way forward and it should require a pull one of the things we do as a test is snap the bolt forward just give it a little wrist snap like this this ensures that the bolt cam pin is properly installed and the bolt is fixed to the bolt carrier failure to install the cam pin will result in a bolt that flies across the room and if you put it into the gun without the cam pin and fire it you're not going to like the results charging handle goes back in you have to get the little tabs on the charging handle aligned with their slot in the receiver and put it partway in place then take the bolt with the bolt head forward get the carrier key inserted into the slot in the bolt the charging handle rather and press the whole assembly forward when pressed forward and latched it pretty much won't fall out of the gun if you have applied lubricant properly to just these four rails apply plenty of it but that's all the holes here in the side of the bolt they are not lubrication holes they are in fact gas vent holes for the gas that's being directed down the carrier key and if you look at slow-motion photography of the gun being fired you'll see distinct puffs of gas coming out of those holes every time the gun is fired so if you're pouring oil down in there you're pretty much simply wasting time and money and just these four services are really all that need to be done if you feel like wiping a little bit of lubricant around the lugs of the bolt to prevent wear that's fine too I've already said that in the lower we don't put any lubrication same thing goes for the buffer and buffer tube there's no lubrication necessary back here whatever lubrication is on the bolt is all that's necessary the buffer has plenty of clearance back there there's no need to lubricate it so now we're going to go ahead and pull the retaining pins out meet the upper and lower receivers together press our pins back in and anytime you do any firearms maintenance part of what you're doing is an inspection of the parts you're looking to see that the extractor isn't broken that the pin is correct the bolt cam pin has no cracks for example you're inspecting all the parts to see that they're normal once you reassemble the gun you should be doing a function check and a function check begins by ensuring firearm is unloaded and you're pointed into a safe area we're going to run the charging handle all the way to the rear and let it go forward and then we're going to put the selector on safe when we press the trigger with the selector on say if the trigger should not move to the rear and you should not hear the hammer fall when we place the selector to semi-auto we press the trigger and hold it you should hear the hammer drop and then we're going to run the charging handle while holding the trigger to the rear this is the normal cycle of operation it's going to let us know that the disconnect er works so we pull the bolt all the way to the rear and ease it forward when we release the trigger we should hear a distinct click as the hammer comes off the disc connector and catches on the trigger and then if we continue to release the trigger and press it again the hammer should fall excellent works in semi-auto we [ __ ] the piece again and if you have a select-fire gun as this is we also need to test the select fire system we put it on full auto press the trigger and we should hear click holding the trigger to the rear pull the bolt to the rear and ease it forward as the bolt goes into battery we should hear the firing pin get struck by the hammer as the automatic sear releases it if I release and press the trigger now nothing happens that's as it should be if I release the trigger and pull the bolt carrier to the rear and then press the trigger I should get a click as the hammer is caught by the normal sear system so now I know the gun functions as it's designed and as its intended to note we didn't do anything with the gas tube never ever put anything down the gas tube the gas tube is under about 50,000 psi of pressure every time you fire around anything that gets stuck in there is pretty well permanently stuck you're not cleaning it out with a brush or a pipe cleaner or anything like that the only thing you're going to put do is break that off in the gas tube thereby rendering the gun unserviceable until somebody can come with a tool and replace that so nothing goes down there especially no lubricant which just doesn't help anything at all overall inspection of the gun make sure you know the the sights are tight nothing nothing is coming loose your optic mount remains tight locked in place I usually use a little bit of either torque seal or nail polish on screw heads to ensure that they haven't become unscrewed in any way other than that that's pretty much all the maintenance that you need to do on your ar-15 questions they're basically three sorts of lubrication there's minimal lubrication in which case you put a thin coat and essentially wipe the lubricant off the surface this is mainly for corrosion protection the second what we would call moderate lubrication you apply a coating of lubricant that's so thin that you can only just see it on the surface right it doesn't run it doesn't form puddles it doesn't drip off the surface all right then we have heavy or wet lubrication here it drips it's like a slice of New York Pizza right it puddles up it forms little rivulets and I mean it's clearly visible on the surface there's plenty of it that's how you want to lube the rails on on this bolt you want to put plenty of lubrication on there it should be running off the entire length of all four surfaces the ar-15 bolt system gets relatively hot in operation and the lubrication will bake off after a while if you put that much Lube on the gun you'll be able to get through a basic combat load ain't three hundred to three hundred and sixty rounds without having a lubrication issue if you're at a training class and you're shooting more than that in a day which isn't at all uncommon you'll want to periodically break the gun open and throw some Lube on the bolt and throw it back in the gun or even just pull the bolt partway to the rear drip some Lube right here and then onto the side of the receiver where the bolt runs and you'll see a couple of shiny marks there where the bearing surface is put a couple of drops in there put a couple of drops right here or on the bolt a little bit to distribute the lubrication go back to work again Lube is far more important than clean on an ar-15 if you keep the gun lubricated it will continue to run it doesn't really matter how dirty it is I have guns over in rental that have fired on the average of 20,000 rounds without what most people would call a cleaning the bolt gets pulled out I wipe it off with a rag I put lube on it I put it back in the gun that's pretty much it going to want to clean the same as you would clean the bore on any firearm pick a bore brush and solvent run that down the bore it is preferable of course to clean from the breech wherever possible and the AR makes cleaning from the breech possible alright you can reach a rod down there a little solvent on a brush some solvent on a patch pay attention to the chamber area and you'll want to clean that out and try and get most the debris out of there I'm not a fanatic about cleaning AR barrels they are normally chrome-lined ain't all the milspec guns or chrome lined they wear very very little the amount of firing debris from the 556 cartridge is minimal in the bore and it's not like a precision rifle where I'm worried about you know miniscule bits of copper and things in the barrel affecting my accuracy the typical rack grade m4 is a two to two-and-a-half minute gun anyway you're really not going to change that by cleaning the bore so once again I'm not fanatical about it but I do punch the board periodically alright now we've gone over all the things you need to know about maintaining your ar-15 and keeping it running if you keep those spare parts the extractor extractor spring and pin the gas rings on hand and know how to change those out you can pretty much keep your ar-15 up and running for the foreseeable future so now that you know how to do that you've got it all clean lubed and ready to go head out to the range and do some shooting if you need a place to shoot visit the NSSF website where to shoot org and remember firearm safety depends on you you you you

Channel: National Shooting Sports Foundation | NSSF

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Keywords: Tutorial, Cooper, instruction, Jeff Cooper, maintenance, gunsmithing, NSSF, Shooting Sport, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Tricks, Rifle, instructional video, how-to, MSR, AR15, Semi-automatic, Shooting Sports, AR, Jeff, firearm education, Firearm, Col. Jeff Cooper, Modern Sporting Rifle, AR-15, Tip, firearms training, guncare, Armalite, #ModernSportingRifle, #MSR, #AR, rifle, Buffer tube, Firing pin, bolt, bolt carrier, upper reciever, extractor, lower reciever, lubricate, field strip, strip, clean

Id: xW4DQ5QlwrA

Length: 29min 37sec (1777 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 06 2012