WE M16A3 Shooting w/ Minor Issues

[DRAGON64]

I got home early from work yesterday to do some nice warm temp shooting of my M16A3 (roughly 80 degrees outside). The rifle seemed to work normally... about halfway through the first mag... nothing to serious, as the rifle appeared to sustain no damage. Check the issues in this video:

http://youtu.be/b5MCKZloHVI

[vulrath]

Check the magazine catch - Pull it out and look to see if it's worn down. I saw some front-to-back play in the magazine (don't know if you can really get rid of that, though); sometimes that's enough to wear enough a groove in the catch that the magazine sits low against the nozzle. This in turn creates issues with feeding. Saw the same problem with my SCAR and the PMAG I made using a hollowed-out RS PMAG as a shell. I cut it too low, so the mag doesn't sit as high as it should. No problem - I just tapped it out far enough using a hammer and socket extension. 'cept it did this when the inner magazine (the actual "meat" of the mag) started slipping down in its shell (with nothing to support it, the vibration from the recoil was causing it to slip around in there).

If there isn't a groove, try tightening the magazine catch one turn so that the magazine sits just a hair higher on the catch (just keep adjusting it one turn at a time - it'll be fairly obvious if it gets in too far before the problem goes away). If you haven't ever done that on a RS AR15, then the procedure is the same as for the WA, so you can reference the guide I wrote back in like October. To be honest, I'd try this first. Might save you a lot of headache.

While you're at it, clean and lube liberally. Probably unrelated to the actual problems, but it can't hurt anything.

[DRAGON64]