Many people feel that the M4 must be clean--absurdly so--to function.
To prove this notion wrong, putting the rubber to the road, I took my Noveske 14.5" Midlength M4 to Viking Tactics Carbine 1.5 course.
The course was excellent, instruction world-class, and I highly recommend this to ANYONE who is ready to take their training to the next level. Many people in attendance from local SWAT to Force Recon learned new things, techniques, etc. and everyone had a great time! Huge +1 for Viking Tactics!
Anyway, back to the M4, since that's what this sub-section is about...
We fired (well, I fired) just shy of 1700 rounds through my M4 over the 3 day course.
I began with a clean, properly lubricated weapon. I used MPro-7 LPX.
That's it.
There was no wiping, cleaning, spitting into the BCG, nothing. I just "forgot" to do a damn thing for the weapon (except to lube the switchblock and move it around to prevent carbon from freezing it...which turned out to be pointless. The 2nd and 3rd day I just left it alone, and it was just fine when I got home, Noveske is right---don't lube it, just move it every few hundred rounds and you will be G2G).
The results?
2 failures.
The first happened toward the 500 round mark. The weapon had locked back on an empty chamber (I glanced), and when I slammed a new mag home and pressed the bolt release, I got a double-feed. Was the first round in the mag dis-lodged coming out of my mag-pouch and thrown into the chamber and a second one fed? I don't know. I can't blame this on the rifle, though, as it locked back on empty, and the problem came when a new mag was inserted. Mag failure? User error? I don't know. It never happened again.
The second failure occurred on the last few hundred rounds of the course. I rode the charging handle after a mag-change during an administrative reload after I had shot a drill. Again, user error.
Other than that, sewing machine. It always locked back on an empty mag, etc. Flawless.
Buy a quality AR, and you won't have to be such a prude about keeping it clean. Just lube it every few thousand rounds or so, and it seems G2G. The bolt would fully seat when gently dry-cycling the weapon, after I got home, btw.
Here is what the weapon looked like when I got home today and broke it down:
Others had a jam or two every now and then, most who had feed issues were using USGI mags. One person started with what was probably a dry weapon, and began having failures at around the 6-700 round mark. It was lubed and forgotten for the rest of the course and did fine. Another person somehow got something in the firing-pin "channel". It was cleared on the bench. We do not know what it was. Other than that, all of our weapons ran just fine. Most were LWRC, BCM, DD, Colt, and others. There were also a few quality self-built rifles, and one RRA. Ammo ranged from Wolf to Lake City M855.
As a whole, there were no "problem children" AR's, and only the guy who ran his dry, and the firing-pin channel blockage caused weapons to be down for more than a few seconds on the line. All other stoppages were cleared quickly, and there were precious few of those. There were far more user errors, than there were weapon-failures (Failure to seat mag, forgetting to charge weapon, etc. etc.)
Over-all, the whole course re-affirmed my opinion that the M4 is a helluva weapon, and plenty durable.
Learning happening. - YouTube
Anyway, on to clean-up...
