Freefloat Handguard Upgrade Step-by-Step

[Music] hey there Gavin gear here from ultimate rear loader calm I just finished my delts on air fifteen build Delton kit m4 style sixteen age carbine on an Anderson strip lower receiver the rifle is running great but I'm not quite satisfied I want to do some upgrades already only a week into the process and that's fine because this is an ar-15 an ar-15 is all about making the rifle what you want it to be what's my priority upgrade I'm going to go from a fixed front sight and corresponding handguard to a freefloat handguard I've got the trinity force Atlas 15 inch free-floating handguard with keymod really cool system if you haven't tried it and also have the trinity force low-profile gas block got some special tools that I've constructed got some special techniques here so let's get straight to it okay let's quickly go over components and tools first we have the trinity force atlases of their 15 inch key mod full Picatinny rail free flow handguard really nice unit really good fit and finish and it has a very special feature the barrel nut and mount is fully indexable in other words we've got an infinitely adjustable rotation and that means that we don't have to worry about aligning our gas tube it's got a nice open section here for that and we don't have to worry about different torque implications for aligning the gas tube hole really nice and I have a special tool here I didn't have a crows foot or torque wrench adapter like Trinity Force recommends so I made one I've got a really cheap Harbor Freight crescent wrench here I've welded a section of impact socket that I cut off to act as the adapter I have a very slight compensation to the torque but as you can see this is going to enable me to have an adjustable crows foot essentially torque wrench adapter and for us to torque this barrel nut down to the exact torque that we need for this particular application handguard also comes with a couple sections of Picatinny rail which is very nice comes with a couple allen keys and Gru's it's pretty complete we also have the trinity force low-profile gas block and I'll give the full product designations and links here in the accompanying blog post so be sure to click on that the low-profile gas block is necessary because we've got a long free float handguard here and it's going to cover up the gas block so it has to be low enough to go down under that it's got the roll pin and we'll go over the process for mounting that we're also going to need a front sight because I'm removing my fixed front sight this is one I got from Brownells a while back to match the rear sight you saw in the first video got the upper receiver vise block this is going to enable us to torque things down to loosen and tighten components the flash hider the barrel nut that kind of thing and we've got an armors wrench this is going to be to remove the Delta ring which acts as the barrel nut on a stock X from sight type of configuration we've got our bench block and I should note that Brownells the sales a fixed front sight bench block that would make it quite a bit easier if you're doing this on a frequent basis working with the fixed front sights that kind of thing we're going to need some allen keys I've got a small hammer I like to be a little bit restrained this is a chunk of aluminum I've covered in duct tape to act as a shim to level things when pounding out pins and I also have my gas tube branch from Brownells here just in case that's needed so let's grit straight into the process of taking stuff apart so that we can then upgrade our freefloat handguard alright I've got my lower receiver vise block in the vise drop the ar-15 down onto that got nothing in the chamber good drop our bolt pop the takedown pin rotate the upper pop the pivot pin option comes next we pull back on the charging handle remove the bolt and remove the charging handle next we insert the upper into the upper receiver vise block now we can mount this in the vise it certainly doesn't take a lot of torque we could be gentle here just meant to clamp on the unit now we can remove the flash hider this flash hider uses a 3/4 inch wrench so now we can take that off note we've got a crush washer and I'm hoping that this will index at the same position so we're going to stack this as a unit so now it's time to remove the tapered pins that hold the fixed front sight to the barrel now special note here since they're tapered you're going to actually see and you can measure their larger on one side and their smaller on the other we want to pound these out from the smaller side obviously so I'm going to take 1/8 inch punch that I have this is a high quality punch trying to get you we're on the other side here so you can see what's going on we're going to pound these out now I already took a quick examination of this and move these they weren't real hard to move but in talking with the mid-south guys sometimes these are real bear to get out and what they recommended is to use heat even map gas you want to be careful that you're not going to remove heat treating your barrel so don't overdo it but these came up pretty easily even the first time I removed them and obviously we're going to want to take these pins set them aside one more thing they do with the fixed front sight is we've got this tiny roll pin that secures the gas tube into the fixed front sight I'm going to take a number 1 roll pin punch and we're going to knock that all the way through let me get the gas tube out there we go back into the upper receiver vise block on the vise now it's time to remove the sight and handguard I'm just going to work this out continue to rock it it comes out ok so the front sight and gas tube comes off now we can remove the handguard components so I've taken the upper out of the upper receiver vise block because we need to be able to pull this filtering down and then with a lot of force hold it there and then pop these guys out a little bit of grunting bitter done all right back into the upper receiver vise block back in the vise we've got our Armorer's wrench and you can see here there's this Delta ring removal tool here so what we do we put it down over the Delta ring slash barrel nut we pull it towards the towards the receiver like this and then we can loosen it go so a little bit of spinning this is going to come off and we can actually remove the barrel looks like that was greased up well and it was put together which is nice I have to worry about things binding okay off work the barrel right out so I applied a fresh coat of grease to the upper receiver barrel threads I applied a fresh coat of grease to the shoulder of the barrel here we're going to align the pin with the notch and then on goes the barrel nut from the Trinity force atlas and we're just going to hand tighten this at this point we're ready to torque down now comes time to torque down the barrel done so I'm going to make sure that this is nice and tight and then we're going to apply our torque because we've got a little bit of extended reach here I'm only going to torque to about 36 foot-pounds that's what I calculated would be 40 right at the nut let's hold it up and there we go done okay I took the gas tube out of the a2 style fix front sight we've got the hole for the roll pin that secures that to the gas block and we've got the gas port the gas port needs to point down and what we need to do is align the hole in the gas tube with the hole in the gas block and then carefully fit a number two roll pin punch through so have to keep keep working this until it's all the way through there we go now here's the trick I'm going to take a piece of tape and align this very carefully together we need to get this tight around this end we can then withdraw the roll pin punch and Hammer the roll pin through got a roll pin holder I've got the roll pin with a dab of grease and what's important here is that we maintain absolutely perfect alignment and I'm actually hammering on an angle because I've got this bench block that I'm using here and we can finish that off with our roll pin punch again getting it down again took the bench block and we're done now it's time to slide the gas block and gas tube onto the upper and what we're going to do here is just slide it right down feed the gas tube through the hole in the upper receiver and torque these set screws down here a little dab of non-permanent Loctite and we're good to go I'm just working on precise alignment here and we want to make sure that we're flush against this shoulder so that looks like that's pretty well aligned take a visual down the board yep we are definitely good so I'm going to torque those babies down all right good well we have a bit more room with handguard off let's reinstall the flash hider fresh coat of grease on the threads everything in the same orientation that we took it off this is a crush washer so we want to get that on correctly and then we're going to take our three quarter inch wrench and torque it down noting the indexing of the flash hider just about like that a little bit more we've got sort of the dust blow prevention down there see the slats are supposed to be vertical that's going to be perfect okay so I've removed to the bottom set screw our clamp crews are loose I'm just going to slide the hearing guard over all of the components on the barrel and we're just going to have to kind of work that on until it goes basically up against the upper receiver now we take our allen key and proceeded to kind of hand tighten these clamp screws and we're going to align going to line our handguard to the upper receiver Picatinny rail perfectly at the same time okay not real tight on these guys yet and we take our set screw in from the bottom this needs no more than 20 inch pounds and I know from installing scopes what that feels like double check the alignment of our Picatinny rail sections snug these up not much needed and we're done okay so now we can insert the charging handle insert the bolt and pop our pivot pin pop our takedown pin and we should be ready to go well here's the moment last time I shot steel with this rifle this time we're going to do a real quick 10 shot rapid-fire sequence so let's do this all right well reliability why it seems really good I'm going to throw a bunch more rounds through this gun and I'm really excited because with the included Picatinny rail sections I can mount an accessory on the side I can mount a bipod adapter on the bottom maybe I'll throw a scope on this rifle and see how it does at 100 yards a really worthwhile upgrade and if you have a fixed front sight ar-15 and want to upgrade check out the links I've got in the post mid-south has some great deals on these trinity force Atlas freefloat handguards low-profile gas block hope you found this video useful and if you did please give it a thumbs up and if you don't want to miss any of the action on ultimate reloader comm please subscribe to my channel until next time happy shooting and happy reloading [Music] you

Channel: gavintoobe

Views: 763,963

Rating: 4.9354701 out of 5

Keywords: Ultimate Reloader, Reloading Blog, AR-15, AR15, .223 Remington, 5.56 NATO, AR-10, .308 Winchester, 45 ACP, 9mm Parabellum, Free float hand guard, handguard, Fixed front sight, M16, M4

Id: 7XdShDtOrC4

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2017