HOW-TO CHOOSE // The Best Bolt Carrier Group for Your AR-15 Build

all right everybody so it's getting to be about that time of year where the weather starts cooling off and I can finally get back out in the desert and shoot pretty soon so I was going through my a ar-15s and I was cleaning them up and stuff and I was like you know what this would be a great opportunity to make a video and what I want to talk about today is a question that kind of shows up in my email all the time and that question is I'm about to do an ar-15 build what do you recommend for both carrier groups and things of that nature you know I get that question a lot with a bunch of different parts and I kind of wanted to make this video because there is a lot of misconceptions out there about you know what's the best bolt carrier group and I wanted to go over a bunch of the features that I look for that I think is most important when I'm doing an ar-15 build and I also wanted to cover what the differences are between different bolt carrier groups and how you can kind of choose the best one for your budget and for your ar-15 build and so I have a little bit of an assortment here from left to right they basically go from most basic to more advanced that we're gonna go over different features and more importantly whenever I'm starting an ar-15 build I build the gun around the bolt carrier group and the barrel so the first two parts that I always choose are the bolt carrier in the barrel we're gonna make a separate video about choosing barrels and then after this video I'm actually going to show you a cleaning video but I was gonna mention some of the cleaning parts today just so you guys can see what I'm using to clean a bolt carrier group also if you see anything in this video that you might want to pick up whether it's the cleaning stuff or one of these bolt carrier groups or what have you just check the very first link in the description if you're on youtube that way you can find all the links and I have discount codes for probably the majority of all these parts so that way you can save some money if that's something you're interested in and also a lot of the links will be affiliate links which means if you use the links that I provide that will give us a small percentage and that's how we keep this channel alive and I just want to say thank you to every single one of you who are aware of that and who continually try to support us so thank you guys first thing I wanted to kind of talk about is there are a ton of boat carrier groups out there kind of like Glock barrels and if you didn't see my video on aftermarket glock barrels i'll put a link below for that but basically most these bolt carrier groups are made by two or three manufacturers and some of them are made in-house the only ones that we know of for sure that are made in-house are the ones where it's stated on the website you know and because a lot of companies have non-disclosure agreements it's almost impossible to tell you know who's making what products and things of that nature but that's honestly not the most important thing it doesn't matter if they're all made by one or two companies I know of at least two companies that manufacture bolt carrier groups and one of them is Aero precision I know that they make all the v bolt carrier groups so that's pretty cool so on the far left here this is gonna be our most basic one let's start with that one first now most bolts and bolt carriers are going to be made out of two different types of Steel typically the carrier which is this one here is made out of an 8620 steel and then typically for milspec purposes the bolt is made out of carpenter 158 steel and then this one's from stag arms so that's something that's interesting is you want to look at the steel that it's made out of not so much on the carrier more so on this bolt right here now at the stag Arms website they actually don't state what this bolt is made out of they say that the carrier is made of 8620 steel but they don't talk about what the bolt is made out of which is a super important part of a decision process I will say I don't have a ton of rounds through this this one came with a stag Arms build kit that I purchased you know I probably have about 500 rounds through this not very much but at the same time I would kind of like to know what kind of steel is made out of but they don't talk about that now moving further down the spectrum here this one is made out of a s7 tool steel this is probably the strongest bolt carrier group that we have in this lineup the entire carrier unit as well as the bolt itself is made out of s7 tool steel I can't remember what the percentage is but it is I can't marry it's like 50% stronger but I can tell you it is definitely the strongest of the Steel's that we have in front of us today moving on down here this one is going to be an aero precision bolt carrier group same thing here you know we got the 86 20 carrier but this bolt is actually made out of a 93 10 tool steel and the difference between 93 10 and carpenter 158 is 93 10 is not milspec however 93 10 theoretically is 7 percent stronger than carpenter 158 steel so that's just something to keep in mind if you see 93 10 it's pretty good steel now moving on to these two right here this one is the failed zero bolt carrier group and this one is the LAN Tec enhanced bolt carrier group both of these 8620 steel on the carrier carpenter 158 steel on the bolt itself so now that we talked about you know what they're made out of let's just kind of run through it one real quick time of the bolt carrier groups carpenter 158 steel is your mil spec steel 90 310 is seven percent stronger than carpenter 158 and then the s7 tool steel I don't remember what the percentage is I tried looking it up I don't remember what it is I did a review on the sharps rifle company bolt carrier group about a year ago and I think I stated what the percentage was back then but I can just tell you it's significantly stronger than any of the others so just keep a heads up on that but honestly I haven't had issues with any of them even this unknown Steel for this for this bolt here I would actually suggest that stag arms list what your bolt is they tell us what the carriers but not the bolt that's kind of important to know but regardless if you choose carpenter 158 from these 93 10 from this or s7 tool steel I just haven't had any issues maybe I just got lucky I don't know so moving on let's talk about another thing that I look at is it an m16 bolt carrier group aka a full auto bolt carrier group or is it an ar-15 bolt carrier group now I don't have an ar-15 quote-unquote bolt carrier group here to show you all of these are m16 bolt carrier groups and all that means guys is the back here see how far up this come this metal piece comes here on the ar-15 it only comes to about right here and then it's cut there so it's a little bit lighter most people go within 16 volt care groups just because they tend to be more robust especially for rapid fire so you want to check is it an ar-15 or an m16 all of these are m16 the only difference is this portion here will be cut further back on an ar-15 bolt carrier group so we've covered materials talked about ar-15 versus m16 bolt carrier groups now let's talk about the coatings so this is our standard parkerized finish right here this is your mil spec finish it's nothing fancy it's not very slippery and that has to do with what we call our friction coefficient and the lower that number the more slippery it is the less likely it is to experience heat and heat related stress and it's also gonna reciprocate easier in your upper receiver with less lubrication so this is your standard run-of-the-mill parkerized once nothing special about those over here these are all nickel boron now nickel boron is just a coating they put on there it looks like it's chrome but it's not it is a coating that gets impregnated into the steel it's not just a surface coating that can be scratched off but it is one of the most slippery coatings that I've ever tried it also has the lowest friction coefficient of a lot of these other bolt carrier groups they are the easiest to clean because they're so slippery you can typically just take a rag a microfiber towel and just wipe them off and I'll show you what I mean here in a second this one I believe a dlc coating which stands for diamond light coating so I don't remember if nickel boron or the dlc is stronger I'm assuming DL C is but you guys can correct me if I'm wrong down in the comments below but the main thing to know here is that the nickel boron at least to the touch feels more slippery but it's very hard to tell the difference honestly it doesn't really matter which coating you guys get just keep in mind the if you get the standard it's going to experience more heat and you're gonna need more lubrication for your ar-15 and if it does experience more heat it experience more stress and then reduce the lifespan of your bolt the next thing that I look for is high-pressure testing and magnetic particle inspection just keep in mind though high-pressure testing and magnetic particle inspecting doesn't guarantee your boat won't break it just means you know at the moment of testing these bolts past now some companies don't worry about that some companies do it's just it doesn't really cost much more you know for bolt carrier that is high pressure tested and magnetic particle inspected then it does for one that isn't so I always go with the one that is now the high pressure testing they always test it mainly up here on the bolt not so much on the carrier they will probably a magnetic particle inspect the carrier but they won't high pressure test it the magnetic particle inspecting is a process they use to look for surface cracks or any imperfections that the human eye can't detect and then the high pressure testing is to make sure that these can handle the explosive forces of a round going off I'm not gonna go into the details because I don't really 100% understand it but I do know that it is something that I think is very important when choosing a bolt carrier group now the next thing that I look for and this is really isn't something that you can really look for until it actually arrives and that is proper staking of your gas tube so right here for those who are new this is the gas tube of your air 15 and the gases from your gas line come back into here and that's what makes this bolt reciprocate now I long time ago before I started YouTube I helped a friend build an ar-15 when I built my very first day ar-15 and I remember we couldn't get his the cycle for crap I think he bought one of those complete DPMS uppers and it came with a DPMS bolt carrier group we couldn't figure out why it wouldn't cycle and then I didn't get a chance to shoot it for a long time keep in mind this was my very first real experiences with ar-15s one day I was like hey let me take a look at it I think I can fix it so I took his upper part before I was about to go shoot it and I was cleaning the bolt carrier and then I noticed this was very loose and what was happening was the gases were going into here and then they were escaping where it meets the carrier and what was funny was it was staked kind of like this one is but it wasn't staked well enough both of the screws back down on it so what do we mean when we talk about properly staked well when we talk about properly staked if you look right here these little indentations up next to the bolts here they basically will stake it pushing material in and hopefully interfering with this bolt so it won't back out and from what I can see it doesn't look like this one is properly staked it looks like maybe a little bit like on this side but it looks like this one could back out pretty easily now like I said I don't have a whole lot of rounds through that so that's something I am gonna check out if you do find that yours isn't properly staked there is a special tool that you can get I will put a link below for it and what it does is just hold your bolt it will stake it perfectly for you so you don't got to worry about taking a hammer and a punch and all that stuff and messing it up but I will put a link for that tool but this one looks like it's gonna need it so I'll probably order that tool for myself and will correctly stick that one so let's look at some examples that are properly staked I will say of these this one looks like it's probably the best has the best staking on it this one's the arrow precision and you can very much see the staking marks 100% interfere with that allen head right there they go into the metal and that will prevent it from backing out on us and that's the arrow precision one let's look at the fail zero the fail zero one's looking pretty good but it's not quite as good as the era of precision especially like right here it's not really staked all that well let me get the slide out of the way so if you get up here close to it it's hard to tell if this one is really properly staked or not but this side looks like it's a little weak this sides a little bit better and then this side looks like it's pretty good it's starting to interfere with this bolt but still that side kind of has me concerned let's take a look at the land tack so this one is definitely properly staked all the way around you can see that it definitely pushes in and interferes with the allen head on all four sides so that one's good to go let's take a look at this one this is our sharps xpb bolt carrier group this is the party the toughest one here this one is properly staked as well you can definitely see that it's staked enough to interfere with all of these bolts right here on all four sides make sure you get it properly staked the main thing you want to do is order from a company that offers a return policy that way if you do receive one that isn't properly staked you can get it you know returned or exchanged and not have any issues to worry about proper gas key staking will definitely mess with your cycling if those bolts start backing out now let's talk about special features amongst both pair groups so these three don't really have any special features aside from the materials that are made up that they're made out of in the coatings they're all designed pretty much the same these two on the other hand are a little bit different on the land tech here you can see there's a lot of stuff that's different from let's just say a more standard one you can all you can tell that there's a lot of relief cuts back here you can also tell up here on the front that there's kind of more squared-off you kind of have a little relief cut right here that you don't have on this one and then you can also tell that they have different camp ins so this one is the land tack enhanced and this one is the Aero precision this camp in is a little bit different we're going to talk about that a little bit so this camp in is what land tack is they have a patent on this it's their rounded camp in on the head here and the theory behind it is it's made out of a stronger materials and you know cuz these can break because when you're bolt is reciprocating it's doing this and that puts stress on your camp in the other claim that they make about this is it creates less wear and your upper receiver and I I can't tell you if that's a legit statement or not I'd have to look at some uppers and see but basically it makes sense in theory this one has an edge to it this one doesn't this one should reciprocate smoother and not put anywhere and your upper receiver as much that's kind of what their thing is about that now as far as a lot of these cuts on it this cut here is to help with overpressure guns it doesn't 100% alleviate it this is what it says on their website but this little port on this side right here this helps extra gas escape if you have an overpressure gun especially if you're running a suppressed gun so that's another thing you got to think about when you're running suppressors is you're going to have a lot more back pressure back here these cuts around in here these are lightning cuts and then right up here these are lightning cuts as well and that helps reduce the amount of friction in the upper receiver so for example with these because they're perfectly rounded they're gonna hug the inside of your upper but the whole surface will be rubbed whereas this one because they have a cutted Engels here you got less surface contact points they also want to make it more balanced a better balanced a balanced bolt carrier group ads is you get less rocking when it reciprocate s-- now we can't see this even in slow-motion I don't know what type of imaging software you would need to actually visualize this but basically when our bolt carrier groups reciprocate they tilt just a little bit and that creates a little bit of extra wear on the bottom a little bit of extra wear on the top also when it's coming back in this bolts meeting the chamber it could put a little bit of chipping on your lugs right up here so that's kind of the reason why a lot of companies are trying to create balanced bolt carrier groups now they're claiming that this one is balanced but like I said I haven't had any issues with any of them so I can't really attest to whether or not it actually made a big significant difference or not now looking at the sharps rifle company this one probably has the most advanced features of all of these but basically they've got a ton of lightning cuts in the back here also it's got a little bit cut off the bottom here and around for more lightning they got a more squared-off look on this to reduce friction and then it's more balanced like a set like I was talking about with the Landtag to reduce any type of rocking during cycling also what's very interesting about this one is the bolt itself you'll notice that all of these other bolt carrier groups that are down here they all have standard lugs on the bolt what do I mean by that well this bolt has squared lugs and if you ever look at the inside of your chamber when this bolts coming home if they don't meet up perfectly your chamber on your barrel could actually put stress on to the edges of these and cause some of them to break off then you wouldn't get solid lockup 'sheriff rifle company said well what if we just angle them backwards and what that does is just adds and improves any reliability not that I've ever had any reliability issues with any of them but this is made like that so that it will lock into the chamber more smoothly and less likely for your lugs to break off I say all that to say this guys you kind of have to adjust your build based around what your needs are you know if your goal is to build a the most reliable ar-15 ever then hey you know get one of the higher end bolt the most expensive one of this entire group is definitely the land tack these are around and any ish dollars I think I'll try to find some discount codes and stuff just check down in the description so you can find all that this one's around the $200 mark just depending on where you get it I have seen them for less sharps actually makes their stuff very fairly priced you know big shout out to them for that you know the next one in the price list is definitely the arrow precision bolt carrier group this one is their nickel boron works great this one probably has the most rounds of all of these this was on my very first AR pistol build that we did about a year and a half almost two years ago now I don't know how many thousands of rounds 1/2 through it but it looked at brand spanking new and they're super easy to clean but we're going to talk about cleaning here in a second and then next up on the list is the fail 0 these are a little bit more affordable it really just depends on where you pick all this stuff but these are around 160 dollar mark and then you have this one from stag arms like I said this is the basic one these are around $100 now there are some other ones that I want to try definitely want to try the ones from fax and firearms that one hopefully will be able to test one of those in the future and I want to try out some of the new Brownells ones if you haven't seen the new Brownells both characters I can't like 100% recommend them because I haven't tried them but I'll put a link below so you can go check those out because they got some badass looking bolts for like amazing prices and I believe they're all high pressure tested magnetic particle expected and they use all the correct Steel's and stuff let's talk about cleaning real quick and we're gonna wrap up this video for cleaning and lube on ARS I don't you ever use CLP I use oil and solvents separately this is shooter Lube I've been using it for a little over a year now almost two years and it's non-toxic it has zero odor to it like when I'm cleaning my guns I can't tell that there's any cleaner being used you could get this on plastic you can get it on your hand just you you could pretty much eat it because it's non-toxic works great I have a 5 percent off discount code for these guys if this is something you want to try I'll put links and codes below the next part that I use is the Otis bone cleaning tool now if you haven't seen this let me show you this real quick we'll just pull this one apart so this little tool here on the back here of your bolt you got your little key back here it'll go into here you could turn it like that and get all the carbon off that's a hard spot I mean you can even see on right now there's a lot of carbon buildup on it and you just turn it and it helps really get all the carbon off it's best to soak it in the solvent first let it sit and then use this also what's cool about it is it will reach way down into here and clean back in here way back here where you can't reach you just turn it and then it starts getting all that carbon out for you so that's that's huge man like that really helps out these aren't super expensive but I'll put links below for everything but also down here on your firing pin this is usually one of the most stubborn spots right here after you've soaked all this down with a good solvent you just put it down into here and now you can twist it and it will start scraping carbon off of here as well as on the neck up in here so I love this little tool it's super affordable and it's probably one of the best purchases I made in a long time and then next up I really love using these ODIs brushes or it doesn't matter where you get him I just prefer getting these hard plastic bristles instead of using steel or copper the copper I find cents to be too soft the still is too abrasive but this hard plastic you can just really get it into these little fine spots and like on your firing pin here and let me see if I can get something off and so here you can see on this side there's less carbon then on this side it's not a complete cleaning but you guys get the gist of it I will put links and coupon codes for everything that we have in this video down below let me know if you guys have any questions down in the down in the comments section I'd love to hear your feedback let me know if I missed anything or if there's anything else you guys would like to know and I'll do my best to get a video out for you but until next time guys I love you and you guys stay sexy

Channel: Tactical Toolbox

Views: 512,634

Rating: 4.8899217 out of 5

Keywords: How-To Choose the Best Bolt Carrier Group for your AR-15 Build, How-To Choose the Best Bolt Carrier Group, best bolt carrier group for ar 15, Best Bolt Carrier Group for AR-15 Build, best bolt carrier group for the money, best bolt carrier group, best bolt carrier group ar15, best ar 15 bolt carrier group for the money, bolt carrier group, best ar 10 bolt carrier group, best budget bolt carrier group, best nickel boron bolt carrier group, ar-15 bcg, ar15 build, tactical toolbox

Id: V-OFvKQpIx0

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 13 2018