Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Looking for good how-to book

I aplogize for sounding like a complete idiot, but I recetnly purchased my first AR; a DPMS AP-4. I have no experience with ARs and was hopingyou could provide not only some good advice, but a good book or manual to assist with breaking it down, proper care and other key needs.

Oh no! Not the AP-4. Those are notorious for exploding in your face!

Just kidding.

Proper care for an AR is pretty simply IMHO. For now, the main thing is that the bolt has some lubrication. This can be accomplished as simply as squirting some oil on it, which will be a little messy but work fine. Or, you can pop the back pin that holds the upper to the lower, pull the charging handle back, remove the bolt carrier, and lube the bolt and carrier a little more "surgically".

Honestly, that's about it. AR's are very reliable guns and don't require a lot of maintenance in normal conditions. If you want to keep it visually clean you'll be popping those pins and wiping things down after every session. If you want to keep it functional, just squirt some oil on the bolt and clean every 500 rounds or so.

At least that's been my experience.

As far as field-stripping an AR... I'm sure there's resources on the net that someone will point you to so I'll skip trying to explain it in text. It's very simple though.

-jeff

I only have competition related books, I learned the strip down/and even assembly from a Marine Corp M16 manual years ago.

What I can tell you is anything by Zedicker on the AR is tough for me to read, usually good, his writing style sucks IMHO and he is more of an architect, IE does the research but little field work.
Feamster did a lot of field work and I like his books.
Past that-- do NOT buy anything by Kuleck and or his company.....cannot think of that company now but its a waste of money, I bought their assembly book on a bet and knew better, but we wanted to see just how bad/stupid it was.... is....

Might try AR15.com for some more info-- they are a huge sight, I only looked at their competition page, but they have lots of links that are good-- I'm just not inot the rambo factions of the gun..

Jeff

Kuleck... you must mean Walt Kuleck, associated with Fulton Armory? That's too bad that the book sucks. He was a major participant on the M14 list (before this modern age of forums!) and was always helpful and a nice guy.

-jeff