The Reliability of your 3 Gun Rifle
Most AR-15’s that are built today are reliable enough right out of the box for the casual 3 Gun shooter. There are certain things you need to do to make sure your 3 Gun rifle stays reliable, starting with a good cleaning regimen! Every single time you shoot your AR-15, you should pull the bolt and clean it. As long as the bolt is clean, you should never have any problems with reliability of you rifle.
Frequently pulling your bolt from your 3 Gun rifle should also indicate when it is time to change your o rings and other wear items. Most bolts are good for 10,000+ rounds, and o rings are usually good for 2,500+ rounds, so I recommend changing them sometime before you actually reach these round counts to be conservative and insure that your rifle performs perfectly in every 3 Gun competition that you enter. To see a full list of maintenance items and suggested replacement intervals for parts of your 3 Gun rifle, click here.
Reliability issues can also come up with optics; if your optic mount comes loose by chance, you’ll be sure to be cussing your rifle, not knowing what happened. I’ve seen it happen where a $200+ mount- a lever was bumped, the zero was lost, and a bad 3 Gun competition stage where the shooter couldn't hit a darn thing (until he pushed the lever back in place).
For this reason, I recommend not using a quick detach optic mount on your 3 Gun rifle unless you are really going to detach it on a regular basis (i.e. more than once a year). There are many good options on the market, and we typically recommend the JP scope mount because of its sturdiness, simplicity, and reliability. 5 screws hold it in place, and there are no knobs or levers to accidentally hit or mess things up when you're in a hurry running through a 3 Gun course. If you do have to pull it off of your rifle, it will return to zero, just it will take a couple minutes instead of a few seconds to pull it off...but if you're doing this less than once a year, who cares about having to spend a couple minutes instead of seconds?
Reliability issues can also arise from your own stupidity when assembling the rifle or changing parts. If you install an adjustable gas block (which I recommend), make sure and use blue loctite on the adjustment screw! I personally had the screw change it’s own adjustment to the point that my rifle would not cycle the bolt! Talk about a bad 3 Gun stage and a bad day. Now, I now use blue loctite on all bolts that might fall out, and I keep my eye closely on others.
Developing Maximum 3 Gun Rifle Speed...
Frequently pulling your bolt from your 3 Gun rifle should also indicate when it is time to change your o rings and other wear items. Most bolts are good for 10,000+ rounds, and o rings are usually good for 2,500+ rounds, so I recommend changing them sometime before you actually reach these round counts to be conservative and insure that your rifle performs perfectly in every 3 Gun competition that you enter. To see a full list of maintenance items and suggested replacement intervals for parts of your 3 Gun rifle, click here.
Reliability issues can also come up with optics; if your optic mount comes loose by chance, you’ll be sure to be cussing your rifle, not knowing what happened. I’ve seen it happen where a $200+ mount- a lever was bumped, the zero was lost, and a bad 3 Gun competition stage where the shooter couldn't hit a darn thing (until he pushed the lever back in place).
For this reason, I recommend not using a quick detach optic mount on your 3 Gun rifle unless you are really going to detach it on a regular basis (i.e. more than once a year). There are many good options on the market, and we typically recommend the JP scope mount because of its sturdiness, simplicity, and reliability. 5 screws hold it in place, and there are no knobs or levers to accidentally hit or mess things up when you're in a hurry running through a 3 Gun course. If you do have to pull it off of your rifle, it will return to zero, just it will take a couple minutes instead of a few seconds to pull it off...but if you're doing this less than once a year, who cares about having to spend a couple minutes instead of seconds?
Reliability issues can also arise from your own stupidity when assembling the rifle or changing parts. If you install an adjustable gas block (which I recommend), make sure and use blue loctite on the adjustment screw! I personally had the screw change it’s own adjustment to the point that my rifle would not cycle the bolt! Talk about a bad 3 Gun stage and a bad day. Now, I now use blue loctite on all bolts that might fall out, and I keep my eye closely on others.
Developing Maximum 3 Gun Rifle Speed...
