Pay Attention and Double Check

[lasher]

sooo, built a 16" 5.56 ar a month or so ago, i've built many ar based rifles. i've tinkered and disassembled and reassembled every little part. but on this one, for some reason i put the bolt into the carrier 180 degress out of phase, the extractor was at the 4 o'clock instead of the 10. just finished sizing and trimming some brass and wanted to check it for feed and extraction. grabbed that rifle and put a hull into a magazine, charged the empty hull...chambered fine, pull back the charging handle and the case tries to eject into the closed side of the receiver. a mini nightmare began at that moment. LOL,,,had to disassemble with the bolt carrier locked up to the rear...i.e. into the stock. finally got it all apart and correctly assembled and functioning.

putting yellow stickies up in the assembly area now

 

[mugsy]

Good reminder that complacency can cause problems (potentially deadly) - and no one should be laughing because it is well documented in many activities that while noobs suffer from their ignorance, the experienced are done in by complacency.

 

[adamsredlines]

I always bounced it off a pic when I put it back together to make sure

 

[SPDguns]

Sounds like the bolt carrier key hole on the bolt is messed up. That thing is designed to be assembled only one way to prevent what happened to you. There should be two indentations on the 6 o'clock position of the bolt that prevents the key from going in wrong. Either something got missed at the factory or someone drilled them out........

 

[lasher]

i thought they would only go in one way as well, this is a FailZero bolt and bolt carrier, once i'm thru working all this brass i'll take it down and look at things again

 

[p238shooter]

Fairly new to the AR's here. I ran across this last week wondering which way it went at first. Figured out which side the ejector had to work, but then got to looking and my pin will only go in one way.

Thanks for posting potential problems, especially for us newbies.

 

[lasher]

yes, the cotter pin will only go in from one side to fit properly, that's not the issue i had

 

[p238shooter]

Not the cotter pin, the bolt cam pin, a large fat pin with the rectangular head. If it had gone in the wrong direction, the bolt would have been rotated 180' I was looking at it before I tried it to see which way it went. After I looked it over, I tried it wrong just to check and it would not go on that way, it was tapered at the bottom for a smaller hole on the bottom side.

 

[lasher]

Not the cotter pin, the bolt cam pin, a large fat pin with the rectangular head. If it had gone in the wrong direction, the bolt would have been rotated 180' I was looking at it before I tried it to see which way it went. After I looked it over, I tried it wrong just to check and it would not go on that way, it was tapered at the bottom for a smaller hole on the bottom side.

i'm sorry, i just don't understand what you're saying. once you put the bolt cam pin in, rotate it and install the firing pin it's good to go after the cotter pin is installed to retain the firing pin