Let's talk about the AUG.

[Evil_Ed]

So all through August (or AUGust, get it? heh heh) Palmetto was blowing out AUGs for 1499...or even more on sale for 1399 for specific models that seemed to change daily. I wound up buying another AUG; this time an A3M1 during that time. Wound up ordering an SF scope from Steyr; a 3x - it sits 60mm lower than the normal AUG optic; the idea is to mount a red dot on the top of the scope (usually T1/T2, or one of the full size Aimpoints; Austria seems to issue the ACO or something similar to that) so you get both magnified and red dot in one package. It actually works better than it sounds, even though it's more a chin weld than a cheek weld for using the red dot...anyway.

Since they don't sell the A3 variant anymore, I'll just shoot the poo out of the A3M1 instead. It came in a nice poop color.



Ignore the janky gorilla tape crafted deflector/padding on the rear of the stock...it actually works pretty well, but it's "temporary" until I can decide which brass deflector I want to spend an outrageous amount of money on. The extra/2nd side rail on the optic mount has also been removed since that picture...

I think Palmetto still has some models on sale...today it's the white one at 1599 - not a super screaming deal but still at or below dealer cost. I wish I could have gotten a white one; oh well. I'll have to make do with brown

Now to finish zeroing it (stupid scope adjust in whole freaking mils it seems - it took 4 mags just to figure out where it was printing and how to adjust it at 100 yards)...and to figure out how to run a light, or even better an IR illuminator and designator. The small side rail is really cramped, and obviously it doesn't really have a top rail in this configuration..

[Caballoflaco]

Now to finish zeroing it (stupid scope adjust in whole freaking mils it seems - it took 4 mags just to figure out where it was printing and how to adjust it at 100 yards)...and to figure out how to run a light, or even better an IR illuminator and designator. The small side rail is really cramped, and obviously it doesn't really have a top rail in this configuration..

I know it’s too late for you, but for anybody else reading. If you pull the receiver out of the stock and remove the bolt carrier you can bore sight it like on an AR upper. This got me pretty dang close at 50yd with an aimpoint comp m3.

Eta: How much does your setup weigh? With a comp M3, 3x micro prism sling and loaded mag I’m close to 10.5 lbs.

[Evil_Ed]

I know it’s too late for you, but for anybody else reading. If you pull the receiver out of the stock and remove the bolt carrier you can bore sight it like on an AR upper. This got me pretty dang close at 50yd with an aimpoint comp m3.

Eta: How much does your setup weigh? With a comp M3, 3x micro prism sling and loaded mag I’m close to 10.5 lbs.

Yeah, about 2 mags in I realized I could have just dismounted the whole thing and done it that way, but at that point I was committed. I ran out of ammo before I could zero the red dot...I slaved the red dot to where the scope crosshairs were at a short distance; when I get a chance this weekend (hopefully) I'll be able to set up a target at 36 yards and zero the red dot on that. It should give me a point blank to 200 yards (I think) zero where the bullet is either at point of impact, or above it, for that whole distance. The 3x SF scope was IIRC designed to be zeroed at 100 meters, and it's got mil dots, so with an ammo dope it should be good. What I wouldn't give to get a manual for the scope...oh well.

Weight is 10lb on the dot with the 3x SF scope, Aimpoint ACO, rubber cover for the ACO, empty Magpul AUG mag, sling, and LaRue rail covers on just about every exposed rail piece. Measured super scientifically by me standing on my scale (I tried it twice and got the same weight each time, which is nice), then me standing on the scale with the rifle. A little bit of a porker but it's distributed pretty well...when I change muzzle devices and hang a can off of it that might change, but for now it's pretty well balanced.

Edited to add - this is how it looks now/how it was weighed:



And before anyone asks - that's a plain old AUG PMAG that I masked the windows and feed lips on, and sprayed with either Krylon or Rustoleum, when the Krylon ran out mid-one of the mags I was painting...

[Evil_Ed]

Over the weekend I was able to swap out the muzzle device for an AAC 51t for my M42k and put 210-ish rounds down range through it - 5 mags were M855, 2 were Hornady 75gr Interlock HD SBR 5.56 rounds; designed for SBRs and I had a couple hundred rounds of it laying around, so wanted to see how it did.



That photo was after cleaning, btw.

First mag went to zeroing the red dot at a measured 36 yards, giving me a 36-300 zero - between 37 and like 280, the bullet will be above the point of aim; at 300 it'll be something like an inch below, though with a 16" barrel it may be less than that. I put another two mags (both M855 and the 75gr Interlock) through suppressed - no problems. Moved to the 100 yard line, verified zero of the 3x optic (not surprising it was off a little, last time I had it out I was rushing things), put a mag of Interlock through it both unsuppressed and suppressed, then the rest of the mags through it with the suppressor on to see what the shift at 100 would be. At 36 yards it was hitting ~2 inches low, at 100 yards it was hitting ~4 inches low, which was fine. The 75gr Hornady though...that was some weak sauce compared to the M855. It would probably be fine on a suppressed 10.3 or 11.5" AR SBR; it seems like it would happily run that without beating it to death. It had noticeably less oomph than the M855 stuff though (all Winchester factory ammo), and it was ~8 inches down at 100 with a can on vs ~4 inches of M855. I'll keep that stash of Hornady for my SBR ARs. Seems like it's a soft point and would probably be great at 25-75 yards anyway.

Cleaning! So yeah a good bit of carbon on the front of the bolt carrier, some on the BCG guide rods that house the recoil springs, and of course inside the stock. The bolt itself though - the face wasn't really dirty, the locking lugs weren't especially dirty (nothing a q-tip couldn't wipe off), and the bolt body was fine. Maybe 120 rounds suppressed? Not a huge amount by any means but on an AR, that would lead to some pretty decent carbon fouling on the bolt, carrier, and on the inside of the upper. I'd guesstimate this was maybe half to 1/3rd of the carbon I'd see on an AR and it cleaned up a fair bit quicker...mostly just wipe out, and worst case dampen a rag with some Hoppes #9 first, then wipe it out/off. Interestingly there was some carbon where the barrel locks into the receiver - wiped it out with rags and q-tips, I just thought it was interesting the carbon would collect there too.

Hopefully this coming weekend I can get out with it some more and shoot it more...I've got 300 rounds loaded and ready to go for it, so we'll see how it does.

And that janky Gorilla Tape deflector/protector worked just fine believe it or not...though I didn't try switching shoulders and shooting it lefty.

[El Cid]

Anyone tried these? Or even seen them in person?

https://www.cdnnsports.com/steyr-aug...-magazine.html

Says: Production: Made in Bosnia and Herzegovina

[RAM Engineer]

Anyone tried these? Or even seen them in person?

https://www.cdnnsports.com/steyr-aug...-magazine.html

Says: Production: Made in Bosnia and Herzegovina

"Front and rear locking lugs and reinforcements are machined from German GD ZN 410"
aka: ZAMAK...

[breakingtime91]

Over the weekend I was able to swap out the muzzle device for an AAC 51t for my M42k and put 210-ish rounds down range through it - 5 mags were M855, 2 were Hornady 75gr Interlock HD SBR 5.56 rounds; designed for SBRs and I had a couple hundred rounds of it laying around, so wanted to see how it did.



That photo was after cleaning, btw.

First mag went to zeroing the red dot at a measured 36 yards, giving me a 36-300 zero - between 37 and like 280, the bullet will be above the point of aim; at 300 it'll be something like an inch below, though with a 16" barrel it may be less than that. I put another two mags (both M855 and the 75gr Interlock) through suppressed - no problems. Moved to the 100 yard line, verified zero of the 3x optic (not surprising it was off a little, last time I had it out I was rushing things), put a mag of Interlock through it both unsuppressed and suppressed, then the rest of the mags through it with the suppressor on to see what the shift at 100 would be. At 36 yards it was hitting ~2 inches low, at 100 yards it was hitting ~4 inches low, which was fine. The 75gr Hornady though...that was some weak sauce compared to the M855. It would probably be fine on a suppressed 10.3 or 11.5" AR SBR; it seems like it would happily run that without beating it to death. It had noticeably less oomph than the M855 stuff though (all Winchester factory ammo), and it was ~8 inches down at 100 with a can on vs ~4 inches of M855. I'll keep that stash of Hornady for my SBR ARs. Seems like it's a soft point and would probably be great at 25-75 yards anyway.

Cleaning! So yeah a good bit of carbon on the front of the bolt carrier, some on the BCG guide rods that house the recoil springs, and of course inside the stock. The bolt itself though - the face wasn't really dirty, the locking lugs weren't especially dirty (nothing a q-tip couldn't wipe off), and the bolt body was fine. Maybe 120 rounds suppressed? Not a huge amount by any means but on an AR, that would lead to some pretty decent carbon fouling on the bolt, carrier, and on the inside of the upper. I'd guesstimate this was maybe half to 1/3rd of the carbon I'd see on an AR and it cleaned up a fair bit quicker...mostly just wipe out, and worst case dampen a rag with some Hoppes #9 first, then wipe it out/off. Interestingly there was some carbon where the barrel locks into the receiver - wiped it out with rags and q-tips, I just thought it was interesting the carbon would collect there too.

Hopefully this coming weekend I can get out with it some more and shoot it more...I've got 300 rounds loaded and ready to go for it, so we'll see how it does.

And that janky Gorilla Tape deflector/protector worked just fine believe it or not...though I didn't try switching shoulders and shooting it lefty.

I'm watching your posts with interests. The bullpup concept has always intrigued me and now thst I'm getting older an easy to maneuver with and carry rifle makes sense to me.. especially the ability to handle it one handed (I have a herd of children)

[Evil_Ed]

Sadly it hasn't been all puppies and roses with the AUG...I took it out this weekend and ran 3 mags unsuppressed, 7 mags suppressed, and another mag unsuppressed. All M855; verified zero on the red dot, verified shift with the can with the red dot, then just shot a bunch for shiggles, etc.

Got it home and broke it down for cleaning, and what appears to be a not-unknown issue with newer AUGs happened to me:

Short version; the bolt sleeve bulged at a very odd spot...where the bolt/pin shouldn't be contacting it, but very clearly, it was. There was a post on arfcom unrelated to mine (that I can't find anymore) and a post on Reddit by someone else who had the same problem happen to them.

I'd add photos but the forum won't let me upload any photos, even ones that meet the 900x600, 100kb limit (and are actually smaller than that now).

Anyway - I happen to have an extra bolt sleeve from a surplus AUG kit laying around and if I had to bet, I'd say newer (post 2021) bolt sleeves are being stamped/cut a little on the tight side. While the gun functioned fine, I could tell towards the end that something was a little off; normally unsuppressed brass would pop out anywhere from 4:00 to 2:30 or so (even with my turbo jank brass deflector made out of Gorilla tape). On the last unsuppressed mag after all the suppressed shooting, brass was popping out around 1:30 or so, which was roughly the same angle that brass would fly out when shooting suppressed. Either things were bouncing off my mushy brass deflector, or it wasn't moving it's full length and it was moving too fast.

The main issue was just disassembling it; I actually had to use something to pry the bolt/sleeve out of the bolt carrier via the cam pathway cut into the top of the carrier. It was actually articulating in the carrier just fine, but it was not happy trying to come out of it.

Like I said I happen to have another bolt sleeve from one of the Malaysian kits (it's cheaper to buy one of those than it is to buy Steyr's "spare parts kit" which is entirely spare parts for the bolt assembly!!) and it dropped in just fine and just visually, the cam pathway stamped into it seemed "roomier". I really should pop the parts back out and mic them and see if they really are different dimensionally...but in the mean time, just for shiggles, I decided to see if I could file the bent one down to size, and apparently I could - 10 minutes of work and it was able to slide back into the carrier with no problems. I should clean it off and put some cold blue on it or something, but otherwise, I'm going to run it again as-is for the next range trip and see what happens.

FWIW - here are the two reddit threads -
This one happened on someone with an HBAR that bent the rear of the bolt sleeve
This one, you can see the divot on the left side of the cam path, where the bolt shouldn't be touching it but clearly was

My thread on arfcom, with the photos I was going to post here but can't

Edited to add - this doesn't really bother me too much - when I first started shooting ARs suppressed, not only was it way filthier, but I'd go through firing pin retaining pins like pigs go through anything that they like to eat. They'd bend and eventually get so twisted up that they were impossible to re-seat once you spent the few minutes trying to pry them out of the carrier...or they'd simply snap and you'd have two chunks of unconnected metal in the bolt carrier, and a firing pin that put the slam into slam fires.. Always fun. Anyway - I wound up buying a KNS firing pin retaining pin (solid steel pin; not a cotter pin) which so far as seemed to solve the issue...until the next part breaks because that one didn't give...but anyway. Point is, this is my 4th AUG, and the first one with this problem...worst case I buy a couple more Malaysian kits on the cheap and have a bunch of spare bolt parts (and other parts I can hoc on gunbroker, like trigger packs, etc) for half the price of Steyr's kit.

Further edit - this could be %100 caused by suppressed shooting - I've only got a few more mags through it unsuppressed than I do suppressed...the thing is, where it's contacting, it doesn't seem like it could contact there in any part of it's function except when it's chambering a round/slamming closed in the receiver. So this is happening (seemingly) on bolt close which if anything would be less violent on a suppressed gun. Also - the only way (currently) to get another bolt sleeve is to buy the whole Steyr spare parts kit...I've been trying to get a hold of someone at Steyr to see about buying individual spare parts, but they're a small shop in the US...I keep getting their voicemail. One of these days I'll actually leave a voicemail for them and ask for them to call me back...

[helothar]

Sadly it hasn't been all puppies and roses with the AUG...I took it out this weekend and ran 3 mags unsuppressed, 7 mags suppressed, and another mag unsuppressed. All M855; verified zero on the red dot, verified shift with the can with the red dot, then just shot a bunch for shiggles, etc.

Got it home and broke it down for cleaning, and what appears to be a not-unknown issue with newer AUGs happened to me:

Short version; the bolt sleeve bulged at a very odd spot...where the bolt/pin shouldn't be contacting it, but very clearly, it was. There was a post on arfcom unrelated to mine (that I can't find anymore) and a post on Reddit by someone else who had the same problem happen to them.

I'd add photos but the forum won't let me upload any photos, even ones that meet the 900x600, 100kb limit (and are actually smaller than that now).

Anyway - I happen to have an extra bolt sleeve from a surplus AUG kit laying around and if I had to bet, I'd say newer (post 2021) bolt sleeves are being stamped/cut a little on the tight side. While the gun functioned fine, I could tell towards the end that something was a little off; normally unsuppressed brass would pop out anywhere from 4:00 to 2:30 or so (even with my turbo jank brass deflector made out of Gorilla tape). On the last unsuppressed mag after all the suppressed shooting, brass was popping out around 1:30 or so, which was roughly the same angle that brass would fly out when shooting suppressed. Either things were bouncing off my mushy brass deflector, or it wasn't moving it's full length and it was moving too fast.

The main issue was just disassembling it; I actually had to use something to pry the bolt/sleeve out of the bolt carrier via the cam pathway cut into the top of the carrier. It was actually articulating in the carrier just fine, but it was not happy trying to come out of it.

Like I said I happen to have another bolt sleeve from one of the Malaysian kits (it's cheaper to buy one of those than it is to buy Steyr's "spare parts kit" which is entirely spare parts for the bolt assembly!!) and it dropped in just fine and just visually, the cam pathway stamped into it seemed "roomier". I really should pop the parts back out and mic them and see if they really are different dimensionally...but in the mean time, just for shiggles, I decided to see if I could file the bent one down to size, and apparently I could - 10 minutes of work and it was able to slide back into the carrier with no problems. I should clean it off and put some cold blue on it or something, but otherwise, I'm going to run it again as-is for the next range trip and see what happens.

FWIW - here are the two reddit threads -
This one happened on someone with an HBAR that bent the rear of the bolt sleeve
This one, you can see the divot on the left side of the cam path, where the bolt shouldn't be touching it but clearly was

My thread on arfcom, with the photos I was going to post here but can't

Edited to add - this doesn't really bother me too much - when I first started shooting ARs suppressed, not only was it way filthier, but I'd go through firing pin retaining pins like pigs go through anything that they like to eat. They'd bend and eventually get so twisted up that they were impossible to re-seat once you spent the few minutes trying to pry them out of the carrier...or they'd simply snap and you'd have two chunks of unconnected metal in the bolt carrier, and a firing pin that put the slam into slam fires.. Always fun. Anyway - I wound up buying a KNS firing pin retaining pin (solid steel pin; not a cotter pin) which so far as seemed to solve the issue...until the next part breaks because that one didn't give...but anyway. Point is, this is my 4th AUG, and the first one with this problem...worst case I buy a couple more Malaysian kits on the cheap and have a bunch of spare bolt parts (and other parts I can hoc on gunbroker, like trigger packs, etc) for half the price of Steyr's kit.

Further edit - this could be %100 caused by suppressed shooting - I've only got a few more mags through it unsuppressed than I do suppressed...the thing is, where it's contacting, it doesn't seem like it could contact there in any part of it's function except when it's chambering a round/slamming closed in the receiver. So this is happening (seemingly) on bolt close which if anything would be less violent on a suppressed gun. Also - the only way (currently) to get another bolt sleeve is to buy the whole Steyr spare parts kit...I've been trying to get a hold of someone at Steyr to see about buying individual spare parts, but they're a small shop in the US...I keep getting their voicemail. One of these days I'll actually leave a voicemail for them and ask for them to call me back...

Are you using the suppressor optimized gas plug?

[Evil_Ed]

Are you using the suppressor optimized gas plug?

Of course, with it turned to the correct setting for the situation.