barrel... wow.... anyone see this before???

[hd96heritage]

barrel is LBE 8.5" 300blk. gun has yet to be fired

working on swapping out the rail on my sbr tonight.

upper fully assembled in vice block, start with removing muzzle brake (installed with only 30ftlb and rocksett) barrel twists on me and gas tube bends

son of a ....

unpin gas tube and remove, slide back gas block, try again and barrel TWISTS again! i end up backing off barrel nut and unscrewing the barrel from the chamber piece with indicator pin and remove from upper while that piece is still in upper.

what do you guys think??

will this be safe to reinstall??

and my muzzle brake is still attached and i can't get if off. soaking in water now. so much for an easy swap.....

 

[OneBadV8]

Call the manufacturer. That shouldn't happen to your barrel.

 

[M67]

Damn, that sucks. That's happened to me once before on a Head Down. Called them up and they claimed something with the nitride treatment and the barrel extensions were known not to be super tight. That being said, they don't use nitride barrels any more.

I think the guy's name is Tony who answers the phone at LBE. Seemed like a nice guy, I'd give him a call. I've asked him about their barrels before and said that if there were any issues not to hesitate to call him

 

[hd96heritage]

thanks guys. man this sucks. guess i wont be trying it out this weekend.

any suggestions on how to get the muzzle brake off now? ive been trying to wrap it in a towel and put in vice, i don't want to screw up their barrel even tho it must be returned.

 

[M67]

thanks guys. man this sucks. guess i wont be trying it out this weekend.

any suggestions on how to get the muzzle brake off now? ive been trying to wrap it in a towel and put in vice, i don't want to screw up their barrel even tho it must be returned.

Vice it and vice it hard. It's nitride, it can take it. Besides, the extension came off, I wouldn't be too concerned about messing up the barrel.

Or just leave it on and when you send that barrel back have them take it off and install it on a new barrel

 

[churchmouse]

Rockset can be heated up with a propane torch (gently) to get it released.

 

[42769vette]

I actually have seen this happen once. I had a barrel do this to me.

I ask AJ Brown about it (he had a large hand in designing various AR's used by the seals over the years so he knows a thing or two). He explained to me that when that happens the barrel extension is not properly torqued when staking it.

There for, the barrel is chambered without the extension being torqued.

There for if you torque the extension properly the chamber will more than likely be out of spec.

I was trying to hire him to fix the issue, so he cost himself money by telling me this.

 

[hd96heritage]

thanks for the info people. turned out to be a bummer of a night but i'm kinda glad now that it happened this way before i started using it. i don't feel confident this barrel was made to quality standards and i will feel a lot better with a new barrel.

 

[munch520]

Soaking the muzzle in water overnight will un-bond the rocksett. Should make this whole process a lotttt easier for you...

 

[padawan]

Church is right about the rocksett. Heat it up and it will back right off.

Use some type of soft-jaw barrel jaw with your vise and crank the heck out of it. Take a couple pieces of oak 1x4, clamp them together, drill a hole into the length to produce a 'v'. Use those for your soft-jaw to hold the bbl in the vice. Heat up the rs and remove the muzzle device. Gentle propane will not hurt it.

Is the indexing pin sheared off on the bbl extension? If not, you might be able to thread it back on. Those torque at 150 ft-lbs. Brownells sells a bbl extension adapter to thread it back on. It has to be lined up very very close or your gas port/block will not line up.

Search for a Brownells video or youtube.

Might be a good idea to borrow some headspace gauges if you don't have some just to check it.

 

[hd96heritage]

ok. so i thought i'd give you guys an update on what has happened.

i tried all the suggested. let it soak overnight in water... no dice. heated up with propane torch..... no dice....
so i took it back to blythes where i originally purchased the barrel from. they said, "oh you over tightened it." i said no it was only torqued to about 35lbs. they offered to replace the barrel and throw together my upper for my troubles, but.... they couldn't get the flash hider off either!! and that meant couldn't get off my syrac adjustable gas block. they called a week later to let me know the new barrel came in, i asked if they got the flash hider off, they said they are still working on it....

ok, now to make a long story short, they had to make a cut in the teeth of the flash hider to get enough leverage to get it off the barrel and i should be expecting a new aac 51t flash hider by the end of this coming week since the one they cut will be no good for attaching my suppressor.

thanks for all the help and support!

 

[M67]

Did you ever call LBE and if so, what was his response?

 

[hd96heritage]

actually no i did not. that was going to be my next step depending on how blythe's was planning on handling it. blythe's offered to replace the barrel, assemble the upper and ordered my a new flash hider so that was way more than satisfactory. as stated from padawan, if the indexing piece is supposed to be torqued to 150ft lbs then i highly highly doubt it ever was. there is no way i put near 150 lbs on that barrel when i initially bent the gas tube and the barrel came lose from the indexing part. i'll chuck it up to a defected part and still willing to buy their products again

 

[seedubs1]

This is is why you don't buy junk barrels. Is another junk barrel from this junk company going to actually make you confident in your firearm?

I'd return it and spend my money elsewhere. That extension was not torqued properly to begin with. That kind of quality control is unacceptable, and could have resulted in injury down the road if you hadn't figured this out early on.

thanks for the info people. turned out to be a bummer of a night but i'm kinda glad now that it happened this way before i started using it. i don't feel confident this barrel was made to quality standards and i will feel a lot better with a new barrel.

 

[churchmouse]

I have used heat to successfully release some of the strongest Loc-Tite on the market. Cylinder lock Green.
There was something terribly wrong here.

 

[wsenefeld]

This is is why you don't buy junk barrels. Is another junk barrel from this junk company going to actually make you confident in your firearm?

I'd return it and spend my money elsewhere. That extension was not torqued properly to begin with. That kind of quality control is unacceptable, and could have resulted in injury down the road if you hadn't figured this out early on.

This. This exact same thing happened with my Radical barrel last week. Primary Arms is giving me credit for it and I bought another barrel elsewhere. The extension is supposed to be torqued to 150 ft lbs so taking off a muzzle device shouldn't have loosened it.

To get my brake off I put the barrel itself in the vice and torqued the hell out of it. Brake came off on the first try.

 

[jonny4523]

Sounds like I'll add LBE to my do not buy list. They're manufacturing process should have quality checks that would catch something like this.

Buy once, cry once.

 

[hd96heritage]

im not ruling out LBE as a "junk" company quite yet and I'm not sure where you get your opinion of this. i work in industry and i know not every piece of material you make every time will be perfect. take for example the remmington 870. most popular and sold shotgun and even they will turn out a poorly constructed pieces from time to time. doesn't mean all the other shotguns are bad. If LBE stands by their product then i will try it once more which is the situation i'm at right now. If something were to go wrong with this barrel then yes i'd be done with them. A couple months ago I bought a pair of Motorola talkabout radios new from cabelas. out of the package they didn't work. should i give up on the most popular 2 way radios just because this pair was no good? no, i returned for another set and those work perfectly. that package was just a lemon.

The reason I chose LBE to begin with was not because of price, but because i was told they had good products and AAC still doesn't have in stock the 9" barrel that i was really after. my goal of this build was not price but to get what i wanted. I wanted a short 300 barrel, was told this will be fine, giving it a shot (literally) by next week and ill let you know

 

[seedubs1]

We aren't talking about something like a Remington 870 or a known good radio. Those have been manufactured in HUGE numbers, and there is a VERY large base of customers that are very happy with their product. You are talking about a barrel that was incorrectly manufactured from a company nobody has even heard of. There's a big difference there.

When I type in:
site:m4carbine.net LBE barrel
or
site:ar15.com LBE barrel

And there is either nothing about them, mostly bad reviews, etc... I typically pass. There's too many good barrel manufacturers out there that meet the price point to waste my time.

If it was a good company making a good product, more people would be running it. There would be more reviews, and the reviews out there would be positive.

I just can't find anything good about LBE barrels. So they're going on my "do not buy list."

 

[wsenefeld]

The only things I have from LBE are a couple gas tubes and a 308 rifle buffer. All of which function fine. After my barrel experience with Radical, I think I'll be sticking with Ballistic Advantage, FN, Mega, and Rainier.