Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Opinions on lowers

I started a thread a year or two ago about building my first AR. My local shop has cmmg, spikes, etc. what should I look for in a lower for a first time build. Have an acquaintance with all the tools.

Craig

Buy whichever lower you like the best (I like the Spikes lowers) and get whatever lower parts kit your shop has in stock and add a Magpul stock and grip. Pick up a complete upper from Palmetto (you can have these shipped to your house) and put as many rounds through it as you can hunting, plinking, etc. You'll probably end up wanting several different purpose-driven guns down the road and you'll start to see what you like/don't like and need/don't need.

For a 1st/fun gun, this is a smokin' deal from Palmetto!

PSA 18" Rifle Length 223 Wylde 1/7 twist SS FF upper w/ Vortex 1-8x Strike Eagle

Nebraska, that’s one of the psa options I was interested in. Are those vortex models any good?

For the $$, they're great!

I have an Aero and it is nice and tight on their upper as well as some others.

I have some others that have no name that are just as tight but cheaper.

They all work and do their job.

Yep.

Name on the side of a stripped lower makes very little difference. They are as close to a commodity as exists in the AR market.

I use the price of stripped lower as my barometer for the overall price level of the AR market.

Most of the lowers you come across like antelope sniper says make very little difference..........and they are forged.
for a step up you can buy billet lowers that in some cases do make a difference. although I think billet uppers make a bigger difference.

How do billet lowers make a difference sometimes?

Some gunsmiths will argue it makes a difference in fit if the upper and lower are a matched pair, but I have no actual experience with matched billet pairs. I imagine you have more relevant exposure in this area.

A billet lower might have additional features like an adjusting screw to control the fit of the lower to the upper or an integrated trigger guard. The first might have some small impact on overall accuracy, the second is mostly cosmetic. Barrels are what make rifles accurate. A Crappy upper or lower might make a good barrel detectably worse, but the best billet set in the world will not make a bad barrel shoot.

I’ve never seen it, but I have heard tales of lowers that had the holes for the trigger pins drilled incorrectly or out of alignment. That would screw up trigger geometry and potentially contribute to poor accuracy. Aside from that, it’s hard to see how one lower could be significantly better than another.

Aero forged lowers have the tensioning screw for upper-lower fit. 75 bucks at the lgs. I see no need to buy anything else, personally.

This ^^^^^^^ great value for the money.

kwg

What the hell has taken you so long? Got to be a interesting story !
Better be a woman that's occupied you this long

No good story....just spending my gun money on other projects 😬