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Thread: PCC, why bother?

  1. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by Clusterfrack View Post
    My local guys are doing one of two things:
    1) Nothing. They buy a PCC and use whatever ammo. A reliable gun would have no problem with that. Eg. All of my ARs will shoot virtually any ammo, suppressed and unsuppressed.
    2) Try to tune their gun and apparently fail.

    At my clubs PCCs are about as (un)reliable as an Open 2011, and slightly less reliable than a 1911.

    For gaming, really who cares? (Well, actually I care. I won't shoot any division that requires a lot of fiddling and tuning).
    For defense, this is a complete dealbreaker.

    JP rifles are by far the least reliable ARs, IME. I have personally seen (and helped fix) more AR malfunctions involving JP components and rifles than all other malfunctions put together. It's not even close. Again, for gaming... whatever. It's annoying but no one's going to die. You couldn't pay me to put JP stuff in a defensive gun.
    Yeah for sure, gaming is gaming.

    They'll get kilt on the street for sure.

    I guess I see it like this:

    If the gun was set up improperly or not maintained then it's the armorer's fault. Unfortunately for most gamers, they are the armorer and some of them are as bad at that as they are shooting.

    If an armorer set up a gun for you initially and then when you ran it, it had zero malfunctions... would you consider that reliable or unreliable?

    That's where I'm at with equipment.

    1. Unreliable after initial setup is a non-starter for me in gaming. I want it to work 100% just like I would want my defensive stuff to work 100%.

    2. I don't mind learning so I can be a competent armorer and set up person.

    I was having a conversation with a friend about this.

    Some people like the versatility of an all season tire.
    But some people would rather have the performance of a summer tire, knowing it won't work well in cold temperatures and it won't be as durable as an all season.

    The issue is when you get people who buy a summer tire without understanding they bought a summer tire.

    That's why Carry Optics and Production are such great divisions. They're perfect all season tires.

    The Sig MPX is as I understand it, being used with pretty good LEO and Military results. It just may take a good armorer understanding to keep them running as designed.

  2. #52
    Deadeye Dick Clusterfrack's Avatar
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    PCC, why bother?

    It’s hard to know if the gun will be reliable under a range of conditions. It depends on how “stable” it is to perturbations like ammo, wear, dirt, etc.



    I want my life safety equipment to be in a state of stable equilibrium (left figure), not balanced on the tip of unstable equilibrium.

    Interesting analogy with tires. I’ll have to think about that some more.

    Gen 1 and 2 MPXs I’ve seen have had a bunch of small parts failures. Maybe the 3rd gen have solved the issues? It’s a cool design and shoots great, but not at a 5.56 AR level of robustness, IMO.


    Quote Originally Posted by JCN View Post
    If an armorer set up a gun for you initially and then when you ran it, it had zero malfunctions... would you consider that reliable or unreliable?

    Some people like the versatility of an all season tire.
    But some people would rather have the performance of a summer tire, knowing it won't work well in cold temperatures and it won't be as durable as an all season.

    The issue is when you get people who buy a summer tire without understanding they bought a summer tire.

    That's why Carry Optics and Production are such great divisions. They're perfect all season tires.

    The Sig MPX is as I understand it, being used with pretty good LEO and Military results. It just may take a good armorer understanding to keep them running as designed.
    "You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
    Shabbat shalom, motherf***ers! --Mordechai Jefferson Carver

  3. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by JCN View Post
    2. I don't mind learning so I can be a competent armorer and set up person.
    I think some folks also might be lured into this after assembling a direct impingement gun that is pushed open by 50k psi of gas and pushed closed by a 14" long spring, if you "build" one of those and it doesn't work you really screwed the pooch. Maybe it shoots harshly because it has too much gas and not enough buffer or dwell time, but they are pretty damn sure to function. And if they don't there are some pretty obvious things to revisit.

    Then ya turn around and put together a blowback gun that looks just like your gas gun, but balances buffer and bolt weight with the ammo recoil pulse and doesn't benefit by being blown open by that big puff of gas. And the ejector is no longer in the bolt face, it is over in the lower that may be loosely attached to the upper carrying the bolt. Then in order to gain a few hundredths of a second (over a match that will consist of 1-3 minutes) you start farting around with that recoil pulse. And you expect it to feed from your pistol magazines (ETA: that might have plastic feed lips...) that you put huge extended baseplates on.

    In my case, after having some experience with DI guns I had a hard time getting my PCC to chug reliably, and it feeds from the magazines that were derived from a blowback gun, intended to push feed cartridges that are not really slid up the bolt face. I finally figured out that extractor (ETA: Ejector, not extractor) issue and it is cooking now, but with normal power ammo.
    Last edited by mmc45414; 01-18-2022 at 07:56 PM.

  4. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by Clusterfrack View Post
    It’s hard to know if the gun will be reliable under a range of conditions. It depends on how “stable” it is to perturbations like ammo, wear, dirt, etc.



    I want my life safety equipment to be in a state of stable equilibrium (left figure), not balanced on the tip of unstable equilibrium.

    Interesting analogy with tires. I’ll have to think about that some more.
    So yes. I agree with you. My solution is somewhat different.

    When I picked the P365 as a carry gun very very early in production, I bought two.

    If the gun was perfectly reliable as a carry gun between rounds 1-1000 then I would keep my carry gun in that state so it never got into failure of parts territory. Because it matters that much to me.

    Even years later, my round count on the gun is less than a thousand.

    I have 4 copies for practice and watch for failure patterns at different wear levels.

    So far I have broken one recoil spring at probably 8k plus rounds.

    No other failures.

    I see gaming guns like that for me.

    I have a dry gun, a high round count practice gun and a low count match gun.

    That way I can test failures with the practice gun and watch for them and preventatively maintain the match gun before that point.

    So that the match gun has enough margin of reliability under normal match circumstances.

    For example I didn’t clean the MPX before taking it to the range.

    I shot it until it choked. It choked with gamer Syntech first and after a while more it started to choke on Lawman.

    Cleaned the factory sticky corrosion protectant off, oiled it and no malfunctions at all with gamer Syntech in thousands of rounds.

    But I know if I had any failure I could go up on power in a pinch.

    But I also know that the bolt system likes being clean.

    If I were to use the gun for self protection in muddy snow rolling around, higher power ammo and higher power recoil springs would add back margin.

    An all season tire if you will.

    But if I’m anticipating running a race on a dry race track, I’ll set up the gun with enough margin for those restricted conditions and go faster. Race tire.

    If it rains, I’ll change to “rain tires” on track. That’s what we do when we race. It’s more of a PITA, but that’s part of the way some of us race. Same as I would change to different ammo or springs if I needed more margin.

  5. #55
    The R in F.A.R.T RevolverRob's Avatar
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    I like shooting submachine guns. PCC is pretty much the closest I can get. Before "PCC" was a competition thing. You built a reliable 9mm AR one way:

    Magwell block that used Colt magazines, Colt and Hahn Precision built the best + Colt magazines from Colt, Metalform, or ASC - 32-rounds or 20 round format + A heavy buffer, twice as heavy as a H-buffer, Hahn and Colt built the best + Taper the bottom of the BCG to help ride over the hammer = Most reliable 9mm AR format

    When guys started moving away from that combination - they lost reliability.

  6. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by mmc45414 View Post
    and it feeds from the magazines that were derived from a blowback gun, intended to push feed cartridges that are not really slid up the bolt face
    Quote Originally Posted by RevolverRob View Post
    Magwell block that used Colt magazines ... + Colt magazines from Colt, Metalform, or ASC
    I had to go back and check to make sure my recollection was correct, but when I wrote the above I was inferring that the Colt magazines were Uzi magazines before Colt built their gun around them. Nobody ever said an Uzi was not reliable, ever. The more we chat about this the more it makes me ponder that maybe the same folks that can manage to make Glocks (probably the most reliable pistol ever) malfunction by "improving" them are also using ARs built around their improved Glock magazines. I have watched people shoot Steel Challenge stages that require 5-7 rounds per string with 32 round Glock magazines (that are probably actually Magpul mags with plastic lips) with extensions on them. I guess it might be a little advantage to stay in your zone and shoot the entire stage without changing magazines, but...

    The adage may be Don't Hate The Player, Hate The Game, but in this case it is probably OK to hate the player.

  7. #57
    Site Supporter ST911's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Clusterfrack View Post
    My local guys are doing one of two things:
    1) Nothing. They buy a PCC and use whatever ammo. A reliable gun would have no problem with that. Eg. All of my ARs will shoot virtually any ammo, suppressed and unsuppressed.
    2) Try to tune their gun and apparently fail.
    Same here. #2 tends to be the same guys that have trouble with their handguns as well.

    Quote Originally Posted by peterb View Post
    For someone not looking to shave splits, what would be a reasonable low-fuss entry to PCC — get the Ruger and run it essentially stock?
    Quote Originally Posted by Zincwarrior View Post
    Yes, I have not seen any problems with the Rugers.
    Same, with decent factory ammo they run. Mine will choke with lighter loads if not rigidly held, but that's not unexpected.
    الدهون القاع الفتيات لك جعل العالم هزاز جولة الذهاب

  8. #58
    Site Supporter HeavyDuty's Avatar
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    I realize this is a PCC thread, but do the Ruger reliability comments apply to the PC Charger, too?
    Ken

    BBI: ...”you better not forget the safe word because shit's about to get weird”...
    revchuck38: ...”mo' ammo is mo' betta' unless you're swimming or on fire.”

  9. #59
    The R in F.A.R.T RevolverRob's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mmc45414 View Post
    I had to go back and check to make sure my recollection was correct, but when I wrote the above I was inferring that the Colt magazines were Uzi magazines before Colt built their gun around them. Nobody ever said an Uzi was not reliable, ever. The more we chat about this the more it makes me ponder that maybe the same folks that can manage to make Glocks (probably the most reliable pistol ever) malfunction by "improving" them are also using ARs built around their improved Glock magazines. I have watched people shoot Steel Challenge stages that require 5-7 rounds per string with 32 round Glock magazines (that are probably actually Magpul mags with plastic lips) with extensions on them. I guess it might be a little advantage to stay in your zone and shoot the entire stage without changing magazines, but...

    The adage may be Don't Hate The Player, Hate The Game, but in this case it is probably OK to hate the player.
    There is one additional complexity if the Glock mag. The feed angle and single feed form, doesn't allow the same level of slop of a bouncing blow-back bolt. It's why the locked bolt/roller delay/Ruger PCC guns work better with Glock mags. An AR9 is just a straight blowback gun. And we've known for about...oh like 100 years now? That straight blowback works best with a double feed, straight, magazine that presents the bullet nigh straight on to the chamber. Which is what the UZI/Colt mag does...

    The UZI and Colt mags are themselves derivatives of the Suomi mag, which is basically the best double feed stick mag in existence.

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