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LaRue Uppers


IHMSA15151

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I'm in the process of building a sort of medium range rifle. Looking to shoot mostly in the 200-400 yd range with a 223. I have my lower complete and was looking at parts & complete uppers from LaRue Tactical and was wondering if anyone has any experience with their uppers or barrels? Thanks, Steve

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Depending on what you want to do with it might be stretching the legs on a 223 a bit for that range. Might consider a 6.5 if you intend to use it for hunting.

Grendels are great, but I have had some reliability problems and magazine finickyness with mine. Also 2-400 is only stretching it if he is hunting deer or larger game.

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Didn't know they were cutting fluted chambers, that might be a game changer for me. It's mainly a target rifle, no real hunting except an occasional ground squirrel trip.

They hide it behind some marketspeak, but yeah, fluted chamber. Weird since their crap's already stupid reliable. Were their drill press operators getting bored or what?

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Don't know why someone would recommend going to a 6.5 for the 200-400 yd range as this is a great range for the 233. Go over to Gibbz arms, and get you a side charger and match it up with a nice barrel from JP. I'd get one of the longer ones to keep my velocity up, with as fast a twist as they have and shoot something in the 69-75 gr bullet range. The gun should shoot good, and accurately, and the bigger bullets should do a good job for you with a little bit of Varget. Use the longest hand guard that you can find to get your bipod as far forward as you can, and use a good trigger. Just to clarify, I run a 6.5 Creedmoor on the PRS circuit, and it shoots like the devil, but if you told me I was going to a ma

tch where 400 yds is the max range, I'm grabbing my precision ar every single time. No recoil, quick follow up shots and a light package to carry around. Now, if the range gets past 4-500, it's time to move up for sure. Here is a pic of four shots at 500 yds post-6496-0-01916600-1455289581_thumb.jp

Edited by shooter steve
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Thanks for the info SS. That is my plan. Fast twist and some 69 or 70 gr pills. I have a NRA match rifle built on an AR platform that does well in "across the course" going out to 600yds. with the Sierra 77gr. MKs. I thought about just modifying it with a different stock, mounting a scope & bipod but I had almost a complete lower in parts sitting in the gun room.

I sent an email question about their chambers to LaRue, I'll post their response when I receive it.

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I sent an email to LaRue Tactical about a week ago asking about the fluted chamber issue and hadn't heard anything back, so I gave them a call today. Talked to a guy in sales that said he had seen my email and forwarded it to their engineering dept. He said I should get a response of some type from them but that the company is pretty tight lipped about what and how they do anything on their rifles and wasn't sure if they would even say it's fluted or proprietary or not fluted no matter what the process was. All I could get out of him was that they were very accurate and he referred me to all their "satisfied customer" comments.

I also had a chance to speak with a couple guys I know from 3 gun & steel matches that own Larue rifles. They said they had heard that the chambers were fluted but if they were it was very minimal. They both reload and said that the case isn't effected any and you have to look real close to see any evidence of it at all on the fired brass. So, I haven't made up my mind yet, but I'm thinking I'll go with their upper. I have to now find out what kind of lead time if any on just the complete uppers.

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If you're making your own ammo then almost any decent quality barrel will do. Except for a couple of dodgy crown jobs, I've yet to see a mid-price AR barrel that couldn't do at least MOA with tuned handloads. A decent stainless barrel that's been lead-lapped and air gauged will outshoot almost anyone.

Also don't see the need for high priced uppers. As long as the face is squared to the bore it will do perfectly well, even cheap Palmetto stuff.

A proper, knowledgeable assembly with decent parts will work just fine for anything but chasing V's at a High Power competition. High-priced cnc/billet parts from tacticalninja supercoolguy vendors not required. After over 40 years of development, these rifles aren't rocket science anymore and throwing more money at them gets you very, very small improvements over any plain old El Cheapo rifle with a free-floated match barrel and quality trigger. Any decent rifle mechanic can easily build a half-minute capable AR for much less than what Larue charges for just an upper. If you simply must spend more, spend it on glass.

However, with all that being said, if you're not handloading then you should go ahead and spend the money on a system proven to work well with a wide variety of ammo. Larue fits that bill. Rainier too. Most of the others I'm thinking of usually have a waiting list.

Side note, anyone that thinks 400 yards is a long way to shoot a 5.56, let me introduce you to any of the military shooting teams. Off the shelf Hbars with Lake City mass produced match ammo regularly win NRA/CMP Service Rifle competitions by shooting tiny little groups at 600 yards - with iron sights! Hell, I wouldn't stand in front of any of those guys at 1,200 yards.

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"Side note, anyone that thinks 400 yards is a long way to shoot a 5.56, let me introduce you to any of the military shooting teams. Off the shelf Hbars with Lake City mass produced match ammo regularly win NRA/CMP Service Rifle competitions by shooting tiny little groups at 600 yards - with iron sights! Hell, I wouldn't stand in front of any of those guys at 1,200 yards."

This /\ /\ ... I am not a CMP shooter, but was out banging 4" spinner at 500 with 53gn v-maxes on monday. It took 3 alternating hits to get it around but had no problems, even with a relatively gusty full value 10 mph wind. I have watched my buddy (presidents 100 shooter) knock out 3" groups at 600 with his HBAR.

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