DPMS Bolt and Carrier Blues 

Let me start out by saying that those of you who know me well, know that “Factory Standard” is never good enough for me. I can always do it better than the factory (ha,ha,ha) so I am in the never-ending quest for a new gadget or do-dad to try on my guns. Whether it be a modification done myself or a new piece to go on one of my guns, I am always looking for something better than what I have. A few years ago I got away from swapping and buying guns like changing underwear and decided to take a little more time and think about my purchases in a more calculated manner. Well now I pretty much have the guns I’ve always wanted, so I just continually refine them to scratch that itch of wanting to buy/try something new.

The itch for something different than anyone else came by way of some new BLING for my Colt AR-15. The thought was a new bright shiney, flashy bolt and carrier. After thinking on it for a bit I realized that everyone has a Hard Chrome setup, but I had never seen anyone with a GOLD one before. Yes I said a GOLD titanium coated setup. Well I started the search and found that DPMS was the only one that offered one. Let me backtrack a minute. A red flag should have went up when no one else was using one and the second red flag should have been when I found that only one manufacturer offered one. I kinda like to go against the grain when it comes to trying something new just to be different.

DPMS is a great company with a long standing reputation for their quality AR-15’s and components so I called them and began to ask some questions, which included whether it would be too abrasive and eat up any of my inner parts on my gun. I have hard chrome guns and parts on others and know that there is a break-in period and it is recommended to run hard chrome on hard chrome because of its slightly abrasive properties for the initial break-in. DPMS very confidently assured me that they had never heard of or have had any problems that they knew of and that they sell and install hundreds of them (I’ve never seen one installed in anyone’s gun before). After several calls to DPMS and some internet research without a whole lot of results I decided to take a chance and try it.

I ordered it from Midway for $169.95 for the whole setup. After patiently waiting for the next few days, a box showed up at the shop. I was like a little kid at Christmas. I ripped into the box, pulled out the parts, and slammed them into my rifle. I had truly PIMPED MY AR. It was flashy, sleek, sexy, and a little ghetto all at the same time. It was perfect and just in time for the upcoming 3-gun match where I could debut it and watch the guys melt with envy.

I played with it all afternoon waiting for the weekend where I could go out and give it a whirl. That Saturday I headed to the range with a big smile on my face that wouldn’t last much longer. When I got there I loaded up and got on the bench to re-zero my gun to 100yds instead of  25yds and started shooting. I noticed immediately that the gun was sluggish and had a few failures to feed, extract, and function properly. After about 25-30 rounds I noticed that the hammer was following the bolt like maybe it was short-stroking. I chalked it up as the new bolt/carrier not being broke in yet, so I oiled the crap out of it and stuck it back in. The bolt movement inside the carrier was rough and tight, but seemed to loosen up with a little oil lending to the fact that maybe it just wasn’t worn in yet.

The problems continued. Pretty soon (around 75rounds) the hammer wasn’t hardly staying cocked at all, so I swapped out the parts for my original parts still with no luck. I had only had the hammer cock problem when I first bought my Jewell 2-stage trigger about 5 years ago, which Jewell immediately fixed and have never had any problems since, until now. It seems that Jewell has since changed there specs just a little and have added a little more meat to the hammer face to aid in positive cocking of the hammer in multiple brands of guns that have variations in the height in which the carrier rides in the upper receiver. 

Anyway, needless to say I was disgusted at this point. I headed back to the shop and began to break down my rifle and inspect the parts. What I found next would explain it all. It seems that Tin coated parts have the same abrasive qualities as hard chrome with the exception of them never wearing in and smoothing out, so they just continue to eat away on any parts they come in contact with that are not also titanium coated. My stainless steel $250 Jewell 2-stage Match trigger never had a chance. The titanium coated underside of the carrier literally ate the hammer cocking surface down within 100 rounds so far that it didn’t have enough to cock it anymore. I called DPMS and they said that they had never heard of this before. Well I got one word for that B***Sh**!!!! With a capital B. I pulled the trigger group and sent it to Jewell and Thomas over there replaced it for $35 bucks. I can’t say enough about the Jewell triggers and their company. As for the DPMS carrier assembly…. I sent it back to Midway for a full credit. Kudos to Midway, also another great company who gave me a full credit with no questions asked.

Because I had a week or so until my trigger came back, I started looking for some replacement BLING. Call me hard-headed, but I knew what I wanted and it was some BLING!!! I found an assembly that I really liked and it was a JP Enterprises Stainless Steel Roller Burnished Scalloped Carrier that I could use with my factory bolt. It just so happened that it was the exact same price as the crappy roughly machined DPMS assembly that ate my gun alive. It wasn’t GOLD but it was shiney polished Stainless. I waited a couple of more days til another box from Midway showed up. I opened the box and popped it out. All I can say is: I thought they sent me the wrong parts. Could this get any worse? After a brief freak-out period I looked at the parts a little closer. The carrier wasn’t shiney Stainless, it was shiney BLACK Stainless. Apparently since this is their Tactical part it was requested by customers that it be more covert and not so BLINGING.

I called JP and they explained to me that due to customer requests and the nature of Stainless Steal being prone to gall over time that they had gone to a QPQ process to black out the stainless and give it a self-lubricating finish. QPQ stands for Quench Polish Quench, which is a heat and quench in oil, polish to even out the finish, and heat then quench the part again. Let me just tell you, I was looking for more BLING and wound up with something much, much better. The carrier is scalloped on the sides reducing the weight, therefore lightning the recoil, and speeding up the cycling. Not to mention, its just down right sexy looking. The surface finish is so well machined it’s almost unbelievable and slick and silky like oily glass. Even areas that are not necessary to polish were like a mirror unlike the crude machining on the DPMS assembly.

Guys and gals this thing is just Bad*ss!!!! It feels like the parts are on ball bearings when you hand cycle it. A day later the trigger came back, flawless as expected, and was installed in light speed. Back to the range for some more. It was a beeeaaauuutifuuulll thing!!! I would highly highly recommend the JP Enterprise carrier assembly for anybody’s AR-15 and would equally discourage anyone from using ANY Tin coated parts in there gun, no matter how cool they look. I would also like to say that I still think that DPMS puts out a good product, but apparently there customer service reps and salesman need to get educated on the products they sell and not default to the standpoint of ALL there products are great if they really don’t know. Just say you don’t know if you don’t know.

The point of these reviews is to give you the hard truth from honest personal experience about the good, bad, and ugly of the products we see and use every day. I truly hope that these articles help inform prospective buyers of the experiences of other customers that have had first hand experience with particular products. By the way when is the last time you read a magazine article that wrote that the product that they were writing about was crap and didn’t as advertised or designed?

Jerome’