A Tale of Two Crush Washers, or Two Crush Washers One Barrel, and other AR oddities

[renagadeinjun]

I’ve done similar with a cheap harbor freight soldering iron for red /green loctitie that is

Yeah, I would have tried it till now, I trust cmshoot

 

[BHPSteel]

 

[cmshoot]

This is pretty much how this LMT MARS-LS came in the shop. Screw slot buggered all to hell, and pistol grip cut off short to allow access to said screw.

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I cut the second slot, because the original one was so tore up I couldn’t get a driver to bite in and stay.

Definitely waaaaay too much of some sort of Loctite, and possibly cross-threaded as well. Put a 14” box end wrench on a screwdriver, had a guy leaning on the driver while I turned the wrench. Nothing. This was after soaking in Kroil overnight, and an application of heat.

Finally just cut the head of the grip screw off.

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Cleaned up the shaft of the screw nearly flush with the surface. Drilled into it, inserted an EZ-Out bit into it and attempted to turn. Snapped off the EZ-Out.

Ended up drilling through the screw from one end to the other, then opening the hole with progressively bigger bits. When doing that, usually one of the drill bits will end up turning the screw shaft out. Not in this case.

Drilled it out enough to re-tap the hole to 1/4x28 (factory spec for the grip screw).

I don’t like how the finished threads look, and I don’t like the now raw aluminum that comprises what threads there are. I think that in the future, this could be an issue.

Ordered an 18-8 stainless helicoil. I’ll drill out the hole, permanently install the helicoil, and she’ll be (arguably) better than new, and still use the 1/4x28 factory thread pattern.

Finished fix with helicoil installed.

 

[l33571]

Finished fix with helicoil installed.

View attachment 9420089

Green Monster for the WIN!

 

[renagadeinjun]

Green Monster for the WIN!

Heck yeah, worth its weight in silver indeed .............. !