I was shooting at a friend’s farm a few days ago. His two daughters drove up in the Yamaha Rhino and asked if I could look at an AR that their friend Evan had just gotten. At a glance I could see it had a M&P Sport upper on a Poly80 lower. Someone had cut the front sight off, and mounted a dented BSA variable scope on it. The poly lower was 80% correct and 20% disaster. The 20% appeared to have been finished with an ice pick and a cheese grater. The black hand guards did not have heat shields and were melted on the forward end. The ODG grip was gouged and the FDE Fab Defense butt stock was missing the adjuster lever. The stock was secured by two screws through the receiver tube; impeding the spring and buffer. I snapped it apart, it was filthy. 1/2 a can of Gun Scrubber revealed a shiny bore and decent BCG.
Evan’s stepdad bought it off a co-worker for $300.00, as it “needed tweaking”. His heart was in the right place at least.
Jesus himself couldn’t of healed that lower. I sent the girls back to the house with the receiver tube and upper and Grandpa Rocky put a deep well socket on an extension and twisted the burrs out caused by the drilling and screw installation the original owner had done, and squared up the sight base stumps. Rocky came back to watch me struggle.
I had a free, because it was banged up, Olympic Arms receiver I had filed off the sharp edges of the scratches and gouges and touched them up. I gutted the poly lower in the back of my RAV4 and put the parts into the OA lower, installed the receiver tube and guts, took a grey PSA furniture set I had pulled off one of my carbines and put it on Evan’s AR.
I loaded three rounds in the magazine, set the gun in my rifle test and fired it. It was way off at 25 yards. The scope was trash. I had the girls go get the Monstrum red dot that had been on a Sport I briefly owned. It had gotten wet and died, was brought back to life after being packed in a bowl of rice and left under a lamp for a few weeks.
With the youngest girl on the trigger we got “Titanic” as Rocky called it to shoot into the center of the head of a silhouette at 100 yards. That Monstrum, before it got wet, would blur in direct sunlight. The bath didn’t affect that one way or the other. It will work fine in the woods or on an overcast day.
I touched the sight base up with a Birchwood Casey pen and put a spare mil-surp sling on it.
Evan killed a coyote this morning, wounded a second one who got gunned down by the oldest daughter and her .224 Valkyrie. My wife has asked me why I tote that Rubbermaid footlocker of parts around in the car.