Home AR-15 Delta's DI vs Piston AR15 (SFOD-D)

Delta's DI vs Piston AR15 (SFOD-D) [Range Talk]

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The topic “Direct Impingement” (really it’s internal piston) versus External Piston AR15 still frequently comes up, but this is a topic that U.S. Army’s SFOD-D (Delta) has already tackled ages ago.

Henry and Josh take the peak 90’s Delta Carbine (the “Gordon”) out against the HK416 to see what progress has come up with over the last few decades.

Side note: the “Gordon” carbine you see here is now the “true Gordon”, which is no longer a 12.5in barrel adapted with an AEM5 to mimic the 90’s suppressed Delta M16A2 carbine. This has the 14.5in barrel with an @allenengineering M4 suppressor sleeved over now.

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21 COMMENTS

  1. It's amazing how technology advances. now with the urgi you could put in a light buffer to run low power ammo reliably and then run a B&T flow through suppressor with m193 with hardly any gas in the face

  2. whats the dif between di and piston? check heat and cleanliness of the bcg after squirting 800 rounds in 10 minutes for the answer!

    spoiler, the piston is cleaner, cooler, and more reliable.

  3. I agree the older guns have a certain something. I watched the movie Heat one too many times, and had to build a 11.5" A1. I just ordered PSA's retro brace to complete the look. I couldn't go all the way back in time though. I put a QD end plate, MagPul SL grip, and a BAD lever on it. Just to keep my manual of arms the same, and use my sling. Maybe someday, if the Lord tarries, it will be a full retro build. Right now it goes to church with me, in a non descript bag. Part of an active shooter response kit. Crazy that, that's something we even have to consider.

  4. When Windham Weaponry came back online after the Remington fiasco, I bought one of the first rifles they put out and wanted to test DI vs piston, just from a reliability standpoint. Using cheap Tula ammo the rifle would get fouled enough to start malfunctions at about two hundred rounds. I installed an Adam's Arms piston system and it never malfunctioned again. I don't even clean the damned thing until it's so dirty I feel guilty. Would a DI system run much longer with clean ammo? Yup, certainly. Still, piston systems are superior even with a fairly cheap after-market affair like Adams. Even with clean ammo you're venting tremendous amounts of heat into your chamber and it will cause fails when it gets hot enough and dirty enough.

  5. In Norway, Finland, and Sweden, we all use piston guns for our line infantry, for precisely the reason Henry touches on: Reliability in wet arctic and subarctic conditions. As soon as snow and ice comes into the picture, a lot of "common" knowledge on guns don't quite apply in the same way. All tolerances and parameters for gas systems, lubrication, how clean your gun is etc change, sometimes in unintuitive ways. Like how ample lubrication becomes more important as it gets colder, until a certain point where you instead must run the gun completely dry.
    Things that people have never had issues with on their home range in the US or continental Europe suddenly leads to frequent failures. It is a fairly common experience whenever we get visitors from foreign forces that their gear starts malfunctioning in ways they're unused to.
    In a way it mirrors the experience of us Nordics deploying to hot and sandy places, where our ingrained habits of gun maintenance has led to sand sticking to the oil and gunking up the action, resulting in failures. One of our early hard-won lessons from Afghanistan.

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