APDD that can be a whole 'nother animal. I keep it simple and run the midweight buffer with midlength gas and the black rubber thing for the extractor and have been fine. Also when I change springs I change them all, I dont want a half worn spring to influence something else and leave me chasing my tail.
While your opening a can of worms, you can talk about buffer springs too...some get pretty rabid about chrome springs being smoother than stainless, then you can also look at a solid spring vs a wound wire spring.
Whatever you do you need to change one thing at a time to find out if it is hindering or helping. The worst thing a guy can do is to start swapping multiple springs, buffers or even brakes at once and then not be able to figure out what is going on. I have even seen some muzzle brakes (especially cans) completely alter a feeding/extraction cycle and require different buffers.
Also when your setting up a gun you need to know what your source of ammo is going to be. If your counting on over the counter .223 to make it run most of the time you need to be pretty liberal with you gas and know your parts are going to taking a bit more of a beating with 5.56/nato spec ammo. If you keep the gas tight to run the 5.56 be prepared to practice your stove pipe and extraction failures when running .223. The ideal situation is having one source for all ammo and tuning it to the system.
Brian Enos did a ton of work on tuning pistols with springs, brakes, powders and bullet weights, there is no reason the same principles can be applied to a rifle.
Last edited by varmintsinc; 02/18/14. Reason: Brian stuff
