Bear Creek Arsenal Complete Uppers

[Safety Guy]

I beginning to wonder if I want to do business with Bear Creek. I have been reading a lot of reviews that would lead me to believe they produce a good product, however; not to sure about their customer service. Their website states they offer a military discount and to email their customer service for details. I did that 2 days ago with no reply. Am I being unreasonable thinking I should have gotten some kind of reply by now? What if I ordered and received one of their products and had a customer service question?

[calvarez]

I've got 100 rounds through my BCA 20" upper, and it has performed fine so far with Wolf ammo. I haven't shot anything else in it yet.

[jcjarmon]

BCA has done one hell of a job on the uppers Ive bought, and sold. They do test with steel case ammo, just to make sure the low pressure stuff will still cycle the action. I do the same prep work to BCA barrels I do to any barrel. I open the gas port to .125, crown the barrel the way I want it, and do an 18 round break-in that Krieger recommends. I have had nothing but praises for them. Funnelcake, I cant tell you if the muzzle extension is nitrated, I only use stainless barrels, and stainless extensions. BUt they seem to have this gig figured out. My lead time for hardware has gone from 3 days to 5-10 days in the last month. Id love to now just how many uppers they sell a week.

[GaCop]

Well, this seems to be my area of expertise. I shoot BCA hardware in competition. It works so well, I sell it in my store, and to anyone on this forum, at cost. Their 6.5 Grendel barrels routinely shoot .5 to .7 MOA out to and including 1k yards. I shoot a 24 inch 416r stainless barrel with a 1-9 twist to 700 yards weekly, and several times a year to 1k yards. Any of their rifle barrels from 16 inch to 24 inch will shoot sub-moa with decent factory ammo, and better with hand-loads. BCA does not give me special pricing, or sponsor me. I pay for every upper I get, and there worth it. Let me know what you need, and I'll get you the best price.

Good to know sir!

[GaCop]

I'll advise how they do, have one coming UPS tomorrow and will have it mounted for a range test this weekend. My barrel is in 223 Rem though.

[Red Dawn]

Likely because it won't meet their 1" moa expected results. Seems they test fire with it though.

On another note, seems their chambers do have a compound throat as verified by a member on AR15 as he make casts of three different length barrels.

Thanks that's better than the other I was thinking. That one I can live with.

[Lastrites]

Compound throat is a good thing right?

Yes

[Safety Guy]

Compound throat is a good thing right?

[Lastrites]

I pulled this off the BCA web page at the bottom.

* BCA DOES NOT recommend using steel cased ammo in our Assemblies or Rifles.

Anyone know why ?

Likely because it won't meet their 1" moa expected results. Seems they test fire with it though.

On another note, seems their chambers do have a compound throat as verified by a member on AR15 as he made casts of three different length barrels.

[Red Dawn]

I pulled this off the BCA web page at the bottom.

* BCA DOES NOT recommend using steel cased ammo in our Assemblies or Rifles.

Anyone know why ?

[funnelcake]

JC - Can you tell if the barrel extensions are nitrided also? If so, I'd be curious if the proper order of assembly followed. My brother ordered a bunch of their stuff to try out: few stainless barrels, one plain 4150, three side charging complete uppers (one a lefty) and 5 complete BCG's.

If I get a chance I'll take one or two and shoot @ 100-yards. Alas though, they're all 5.56 or .223 Wylde. TBH the finish work on the carriers and bolt is just OK to my eye. Proof is in the shooting. I haven't seen or heard about any BCA stuff shooting under 1-MOA. Most seem to be 1-1.5 but still a low enough sample pool to be anecdotal. The one 6.5 barrel I ordered had a flat-out awful crown job and went back.

Those guys have a bunch of new equipment, etc. so the potential is probably there...a lot of the rest will be attention to detail IMO.

We're also going to run one of the BCG's in a 7.5" FA 5.56 and largely dump ~1000 rounds through it in short order; half with a can attached. I wish we could do more but that's a lot of ammo cost testing a $49 buck BCG!

[jcjarmon]

Well, this seems to be my area of expertise. I shoot BCA hardware in competition. It works so well, I sell it in my store, and to anyone on this forum, at cost. Their 6.5 Grendel barrels routinely shoot .5 to .7 MOA out to and including 1k yards. I shoot a 24 inch 416r stainless barrel with a 1-9 twist to 700 yards weekly, and several times a year to 1k yards. Any of their rifle barrels from 16 inch to 24 inch will shoot sub-moa with decent factory ammo, and better with hand-loads. BCA does not give me special pricing, or sponsor me. I pay for every upper I get, and there worth it. Let me know what you need, and I'll get you the best price.

[RNRoad]

I have an 18 inch melonite fluted upper. With Hornady ELD-M I'm getting around 1-1.5 MOA during break in with just under 100 fired. I'm hoping it will improve with some more rounds down range. The bolt needed some softening of sharp edges to improve extraction but overall the product is a good buy IMO.

[Grendelshooter]

I've read good things, seems like a perfect barrel upper for plinking with cheap wolf ammo.
If they didn't use the god awful m4 profile I'd have one already.

[Safety Guy]

I think I have read all the search results for "Bear Creek" on this forum and have found very little feedback on how the Bear Creek barrels perform. I'm sure with the low cost and wide distribution of these barrels, many people on this forum have to use them or have used them in the past. I'm hoping that anyone who has knowledge of how these barrels or complete uppers perform, can reply to this thread to help not only me, but everyone looking for a lower cost build. Thank-you