Better Entry Level Grendel

[Sticks]

Discontinued, obsolete, getting rid of inventory for the new year...

[Frontier Gear]

Range time tomorrow hopefully. It was -3 degrees today after the sun went down so it may just be a function test before my boogers freeze. Fortunately, finding a place to shoot around here with no other people around is kind of like finding a Starbucks in Seattle.

cabin.jpg

[Frontier Gear]

Range Report

It was warmer than -3 today but not by much. It was a whole 5 degrees out when I started the Jeep, which made it numbing on the fingers to air up the tires. I whistled for the dog and grabbed a couple of frozen watermelons on the way out that the kids had left in the back of the truck from our last trip to Spokane. I don't know what part of "unload the back of the truck" they didn't understand Oh well, frozen watermelons make good targets.

We set off up the mountain and made good time on the dry pavement, but had to put it into 4wd when turning off of the main road. After the Jeep valiantly dug through the unplowed snow we were almost to the cabin when we came to the base of our steepest hill. Just then my morning scripture reading came to me, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test". "Here's a good spot to set up" I thought. After getting the Jeep turned around, I took a picture of where we had come from.

Jeep View.jpg

After unloading the rifles, I put them on a towel in the snow. Hiking around, playing with the dog and setting up the targets 50 paces away gave the rifles time to get good and cold.

Cold ARs.jpg

From top to bottom they are:

• My personal .223 with a Polymer80 lower. I like to test these things out in the single digit weather just for fun.
• The Budget Build from this thread.
• My hunting 6.5 Grendel. This has a Polymer80 lower on it as well. I had some feeding issues with one of the C-Products mags and wanted to test it out with the new Anderson (E-Lander) mags.

Starting with 223 everything was ok, but the mil-spec trigger was slow on the reset. I've noticed this before in really cold weather. After you fire and release the trigger there is a slight pause before the trigger returns and resets. After a half dozen rounds or so it started warming up and was fine. In warmer weather it doesn't do this.

Next was my hunting Grendel with the Polymer80 lower, mid length gas, 18" BCA barrel, JP SCS, BCA side charging upper and the Rise Armament trigger. This functioned flawlessly with both Wolf steel cased ammo and Hornady Black ammo. The Anderson mags worked well with no issues. The C-Products 20 round mag worked without issue as well. The Grendel popped the first watermelon whereas the 223 had just put holes in it.

Last was the budget build Grendel. This was fun to shoot. I put a rear BUIS on it just for function testing and didn't even bother bore sighting it. Free standing at 50 paces, it blew up the second watermelon on my second shot. It has a BCA upper with a 16" barrel, carbine gas and the Aero M4E1 lower. The buffer system is standard carbine. It does have the same RA trigger as my hunting rifle. These aren't the best triggers in the world, but at $85 they are hard to beat. Again it functioned flawlessly with Wolf steel case and Hornady Black ammo. No light primer strikes, failures to fire or failures to eject. I did some singe round loads and it held open every time like it should. Both Anderson mags and the large C-Products mags fed both types of ammo equally well. The 10 round C-Products mag had one failure to feed though just like before with the other Grendel. That mag is getting labeled as "bad" and going in the closet.

Bad Mag.jpg

The budget build had noticeably more recoil than the hunting Grendel, but it wasn't bad. I was really curious to see how it would function in the cold with carbine gas. For just using "standard" gas and buffer system components, I'm pretty pleased. A nice reliable Grendel at a really good price.

Targets.jpg

The dog had fun as well and was quite pleased with herself for being such a good girl.

good dog.jpg

Next is to chronograph them and sight in the budget build once it has some optics.

[VASCAR2]

[Frontier Gear]

Thanks VASCAR2. I'm glad that you said something. You inspired me to pull them back out and see if I could spot the problem. This is a really crummy picture, but there is a huge difference in the followers. Both of these are C-Products and were purchased at the same time from the same vendor (Odin Works). If I push down on the front of the problem mag it tilts and jams. Pushing down on the front of the 20 round mag just results in the follower lowering as it should. Any thoughts as to why the drastic difference in design? The feed lips actually look the same between the two. I'm pretty sure that it is the follower that's the issue. I'm tempted to swap followers and try it again.

C-Products Mags.jpg

[VASCAR2]

Pull the base off the problem mag. The spring on the 10 round is a full length spring compressed inside the body. The spring might not be in the proper orientation on the bottom of the follower. The coils could be bent or jammed and not stacking properly. The body of the mag could be dirty or gummy from perservatives. I’d inspect the follower for excess plastic from the molding process or improperly molded follower. I’d also inspect the mag body for dents or obstructs that prevent the follower from moving freely. When you remove the floor plate be cautious of the spring as they can be under considerable tension. Some times you need a thin screw driver blade to gradually leverage the floor plate from the body.

[Frontier Gear]

Springs, followers and even the way the body is made are all totally different. The follower doesn't come out of the body on the 20 round mag without bending the tabs. Everything looks fine as in "as designed". Makes me wonder if they changed the design due to feeding issues.

mags.jpg

[VASCAR2]

C Products Defense have changed the ten round spring from the original spring used by C Products and ASC. The followers don’t appear to be the same as my ASC or CP. I don’t have my 6.5 Grendel with me over the holiday so I can’t look at my mags. Looking at the top side of the two mags the ten round mag follower could be installed backwards. On my E-Lander, ASC and CP mags the first round in the mag goes in on the non ejection port side or left side if the mag is in the well. So basically odd numbes on left even numbers on right (ejection port side). Could the follower been placed in backwards or possibly CPD is using a different design for the ten round follower.

If the follower was installed backwards it would bind like you mentioned since there is a groove in the body for the follower to move. Sorry but I don’t own any CPD 6.5 Grendel mags.

[Frontier Gear]

On the 10 rounder, the follower is attached to the spring. The follower can only go in one way as it is molded to match the shape of the body. As you noticed, the first round on the 10 rounder is on the opposite side as compared to the 20 rounder. Interesting, but now I know what to look for (or avoid) when looking at CPD mags.

[grayfox]

I've got the same spring setup/follower on a couple of mags that I was having some trouble with. I took them apart and cleaned (they were a little gunky, not much) with some kroil, and 1 worked but the other continued to tilt the follower. Looking real close on the weld area of the body the first tack weld stuck into the follower's way more on the sticky one than the functional one... Lightly filing down the weld didn't seem to help much but there was also a small nub on the blue follower right there hitting that tack weld. I cut it away and used a small file to put just the hint of a notch/ at an angle into the blue there on the top edge, not all the way vertically on the blue but angling in on the top, now the follower just glides over that weld spot and the mag's working fine now. There might be some kind of interference btw the mag and the blue in your case too. Mine doesn't hang up now on that spot but is working fine.

[Lastrites]

Mag discussion got to me, I tore down a 5 and 10 cpd new mags I recently received. The 10rd front anti-tilt leg has been cut in half with what would have appeared to be by hack-saw. Those edges needed to be cleaned up with either a small file or sand paper. The 10rd mag does tilt a good 1/4" about twice as much as the 5 rounder, My elanders tilt less than both cpd mags.

Both mags had light brownish coating of gunk inside, after cleaning/lubing both and sanding the 10rd'er follower they both seemed smoother. The springs also seem to be of inferior quality or at the least don't have the spring tension compared to the elanders.

I haven't had a chance to run the cpd mags, maybe today.

[bj139]

Lastrites,
Why is there all that extra unexpanded spring?
That doesn't look right. It looks like a manufacturing defect.

[Frontier Gear]

Lastrites,
Why is there all that extra unexpanded spring?
That doesn't look right. It looks like a manufacturing defect.

That's common practice for a mfg to turn a 10 round mag into a 4 or 5 round mag. 10 rounds is the smallest that makes sense from a manufacturing "design" standpoint. Too much smaller and the mag would disappear into the mag well. Some states don't allow you to hunt with 10 rounds though, so the mfg just fills up the extra space with spring material. Kind of like the plug in the end of a shotgun tube.

[Kswhitetails]

I cut about 85% off the un-sprung steel wire weight in the bottom of my mags, replaced it with a piece of plastic cooler handle I had lying around to cut the weight down. I thought about just stretching the spring, cutting it, and making my 5 round ASC mags into 10, but figured I'd never get the spring tempered to hold the shape right. The mags are much lighter, that spring coil is surprisingly heavy...

[Frontier Gear]

Well I deburred the cut part of the follower with a needle file, washed everything in warm soapy water, dried it off and put it all back together with a light coat of oil. After pushing the follower up and down a bunch of times, it seams to be working better now. I'll try it again when when I get to chronograph the rifles. It will be nice if that fixes it, but I'll avoid these mags in the future.