Are Cheap AR-15 Lower Receivers “Just As Good”?

As a Machinist the tolerances depends on what the mfg is wanting, is the tolerances.0005 or are they + or – .005? When I quote jobs the decimal place means the difference in a 100 dollar part vs a 40 dollar part.

All talk not one measurement taken in the whole video.

MP, you are falling for their trap. Don’t waste your money.

As long as it's not a polymer lower…

Toss some anti walk pins in the ruger, I get it , that sucks when you buy a complete and something is wrong but it could be worse you could have dropped that LMT money and got a piece of trash

So long as your not buying blems. You shouldnt have an issue.
Mil spec is milspec. Sure you can pay for tighter tolerance. Though you've got to be reasonable as to if its necessary for your desired goals.

If you do go budget just check that the pin holes aren't oversized and a variety of mags fit the well. If you dont have trouble getting a buffer tube to thread. Whats the issue?

LMT is leftists pride supporters. I do not aprove of companies that do the virtue signaling.

I have 2 Anderson lowers both seemed fine with standard milspec triggers until I swapped a cassette style in them and 1 doesn't seem to fit well. Too tight for proper hammer movement

I’ve got a $600 Aero M4e1 builder set and a $50 PSA lower. Both have aero lower parts kit and aero bcg and neither one of them like to seat a fully loaded gen 2 or gen 3 and honestly the Aero has a harder time receiving a mag in general.

Civilian problems maybe? Cause my m4 in the military had no issue receiving a mag

Good video. Great information

Poverty pony for the win

Multiple uppers per lowers is a popular way to go in ban states which restrict availability, number or grandfather in.

I am a huge fan of BCM products. However I want to put this out there. I only own one BCM lower. (I also own Aero, Colt, and Anderson lowers) and I will say that there can be some magazine compatibility issues. I specifically can’t run 300 blackout pmags in my BCM lower because the tab on the mags that is designed to prevent over insertion actually prevents the mag from inserting far enough into the magwell to lock into place. (5.56 Pmags seem to work fine) I have also heard John Lovel of Warrior Poet Society mention that he has an out of spec BCM lower that also has issues with magazine seating.

This is not me hating on BCM. However it is an issue that I have experienced and have now seen others experience. So I think it’s worth mentioning.

Nobody has ever been able to explain to me, that if an AR lower receiver is not marked, or described. than how do you visually tell the difference, between 6061 or 7075, if there are no markings of any kind, or at least that I know of!
However as an observation, there are companies that sell 6061 AR lowers, & claim mil-spec. which cannot be, because in order to meet mil-spec standards. an AR lower receiver, has to be made of/from a minimum of 7075 t6 aluminum. therefore 6061 t6 aluminum, cannot be mil-spec in any way! just a theory opinion & observation.

i 3d print my lowers with less than 5$ worth of plastic.

if im building a rifle that i expect to need to rapid fire i buy a cheap PSA lower.

Great information!

I don't understand why people cheap out on this stuff if it's your home defense setup

I used to run the office at Tactical Machining.

You and most people don’t understand the BATFE variance process. There are only a couple manufacturers. We make the lowers for everyone. Most companies that have their names engraved on the lower don’t machine anything. For instance we made lowers for over 200 companies when I worked there.

Also there are a few forges and they ALL take out of spec forging back for return from manufacturers.

At the time I worked there we made names such as Rugar, Diamond Back, SOLGW, and many more.

It used to make us laugh when people would claim company X was better then company Y due to QC and such, when we made both to the exact same standards.

These two points throw out 90% of your video. Dont feel bad it throws out most ideas on gun forums too.

Totally agree with your assessment. I have used many Anderson flowers and have had varying results. I have also used the aero standard lowers with much better results but at twice the cost. The Aeros mate up very well with BCM uppers. Like they were made for each other. They are now my go to.

"Just as good" inherently is a compromise we see and say, but at some point guys will dilute themselves in saying its better on as the SAME quality or control as the said product. In fact they then buy or make 20 Ar 15s or builds that supersede the one High End Ar or rifle, We have all been guilty of it. But if you spend $10,000 worth of surplus old guns, ammo, parts, random crap, cheap optics or parts that break, 6 Ars that do the same thing or overlap, ect. When you can spend 10k worth of One good rifle, ammo, suppressor, NVGs, ect. actual callability. Instead of the grand idea of arming the while family and neighborhood when in reality everyone is just going to not give a dam and the families is no going to go with your grand vision. Scalability is key, planning and thinking through your purchase in an industry that feed on our impulse buys and our free market.

Look, we all do it in anything we do, we have to compromise. Do the best you can with what you have, but plan and budget it out. Please spend wisely bc "just as good" is what they want you to do. The Gun Show crap thrown together to get your money is just as good as the DD, Gisselle, Colt, FN, ect is in fact not the same. I'm reading the comments and yall are going to reply the same thing but, when you need to rely on your "range toy" or "hog gun" for a duty gun there's going to be a huge learning lesson. When you do a course or class that has over 1,000 rounds of use throughout a single day that most of the guns you own dont even have 500 rounds its going to shake some of you awake. If these are toys, great play on this shouldn't concern you. But if you a new officer, a down range guy who can acquire his own equipment, the first time owner who HAS to count on this for their life, ect then please do your research on your tool. I love this channel because you try to reason with a crowd that don't want to hear you, or more so perpetuate their "stereotypes". The gun industry loves those kinds of costumers.

How do you know what their quality control specifications are?

You say the only way they can make money is by lowering their quality control. That is not true. They can make more money by not marking their products up.

You're generalizing companies' business models rather than looking at each one individually. Each company that sells a lower receiver isn't making the same from each one they sell.

Magic Prepare, you should look into what it is you're saying. Using ration thinking can only get you to a certain point. You will need to do further research to find the facts.

You get a thumbs down for talking about something you do not know enough about. Do further research and come with facts.

Dude that runs three mags through his gun a year: "I've never had a problem with mine!"

I’m new in the AR build and I wanted to know you guys opinion on SON OF LIBERTY lower? Thanks in advance.

YES

Ah yes , my nemesis. After I stripped my threaded bolt catch pin, I made a promise to myself to never buy again 😂

I get paying extra for the certainty that it's good but i have had several PSAs for very cheap I think one time I bought one for $30 and they have all been in great shape. And the fact that PSA warranties their product it's definitely worth buying . You can sometimes can buy 4 PSA lowers to 1 BCM lower. what are the chances that all four would be bad. And even if one was bad you send it back they send you another one to replace it

Dont forget, Palmetto also operates on a FAR smaller profit margin than all other producers, just in order to get more common use on all of their products to propagate "common usage" under the current laws.

My company made lowers for over 200 other brands over the last 15 years, with their name on them ( called a marketing variance by ATF). They were all exactly the same until the engraving. I saw discussions on afcom arguing which one was better between two that I made. We did several thousand for one of " The big guys" and they required serious tolerance tracking on our CMM. We could not just be "In tolerance" we had to hold plus or minus 10% within that tolerance. They supplied the forgings that came from the same forge that we used. Their forgings were better than any that we ever got on our own.

My Anderson lower is perfectly fine for me. I just buy expensive upper because the most important part of building your AR is the BCG, upper, gas system, barrels and trigger. So far I have bo problem with it (We don’t have many choice lower here in NYS). Little locktite also works wonder if it rattle.

Good luck finding a bcm at the moment

Any gun you build yourself you have to test out to gain confidence in it. I say if it passes it passes just don't screw with it. I would expect higher quality control in a completed gun but that's a different story.

I work in manufacturing. You get what you pay for.

Being in manufacturing and R&D, a lot of the cost is mark up/overhead. They can be equivalent with quality checks and time spent machining and have quite a bit of price difference solely based on markup and overhead

I've built a couple of PSAs and they've worked flawless every time.

I have two AR's. My first one is PSA, second one is an Aero Precision. I bought the assembled PSA upper and lower separately. They fit together without any issues. But the PSA upper will not fit on either my Aero lower, or my buddy's Springfield lower (the rear takedown pin gets stuck about halfway in).

“Just as good” should be followed by “as what”. For these, it should be “as to Milspec”. Most of these companies claim to build to milspec tolerance and quality control, you can look up the standards for these and judge for yourself if they meet these standards. As far as I can tell, they actually do.

No issues with any of my Anderson lowers

I've seen some of the uppers and lowers from the last century. Incredibly sloppy fitment. You had to use o-rings or accuwedges to stop the rattle or slop. I do not see that issue lately. Most are gut und tight. Manufacturing and quality control has come a long way. Every constitution loving citizen of the Republic should own a modern US ar.

Poverty pony crew represent !! 🙌

Aero lower BCM upper hood to go and it’ll run through the thunder ranch urban rifle course.
Aero has good lower QC. BCM has great ‘ride or die’ upper components with good QC.
Why waste money. Go aero lower BCM upper.
I like my triggertech *cue the arguments now

Buyer Beware absolute DO NOT buy a Zavier stripped lower receiver absolutely junk I have the 2nd out of spec lower receiver they sent me and they continued to fight me to warranty the 2nd out of spec lower I finally gave up after like 5 or 6 emails and pictures I ended up buying a Geissele and a x15 green anodized Aero Precision hard to beat quality and in spec lowers great video!!!!

How do you know the pin wasn’t out of spec and the lower was fine ? My guess was switching it to a different lower however I would have to say the numbers alone (how many are produced to how many are hood) maybe don’t justify the idea paying more is better

Trigger fits you’re good and use antiwalk pins

Forged lowers are machined to spec also

I haven't let the add finish to even start the video – Yes cheap priced lowers are just as good

There are 3 forges, all 3 forge their receivers to the MILSPEC. They’re all the same. If you buy a blank lower and have someone put a fancy roll mark on it no one would be able to tell the difference.

Anyone telling you differently is coping because they paid $200 for the same lower regular folks pay $50 for.

I got a Aero M4E1 here the other day on sale. They also have a built in tension screw for the upper mate up. They had them on sale for like $80 the other day and I should've bought 2 or more.

Useful info Mr Magic.
Thx

I was the 500th like, MP! Hope you are swell, brother.

ffs lol
– buy a nice reciever, if worried, buy a backup reciever (or vice versa)
– calculate your chance of being in a true long-term SHTF scenario (based on your location. Also, be realistic)
– based on this guesstimated scenario go ahead and calculate the % chance you're going to be constantly shooting

That's a lot of guessing so I'm just gonna stick with buy a backup if you're truly worried and tbh I feel like I could wear out a PSA barrel before I wear out a lower