AR's are not legos!

[Vulcan]

Yea.........with that platform being around for about a half century now..........quality has been "watered down" by a lot! Everyone and their second Cousin has an AR factory in their Barn now..........

You want to dip into the old "good stuff" now, be prepared to have a fat wallet!

I cannot completely agree that quality has been watered down. Technology improvements have made the factory in the barn possible. CMMG was, at one point, working from an old farm house and a prefab shed. My point being that if you go back and look at some of the out of spec junk that we made work in the 80s verses bargain bin stuff we have now. The quality is pretty good. You can get an Anderson lower for $33.33 right now and they are good quality. Pistols used to be a nightmare for reliability. Expect to pay $1K for one that worked. Now, you can get a $250 kit that runs like a raped ape (just ad the $33 Anderson lower and you are in under $350 after tax, title and tag).

I think supply and demand has forced quality improvements on the industry while everyone and their dog has set up shop. When you had three big go to companies for quality out of the box and ten parts houses and lesser known lower brand names, you certainly got what you paid for. Lots of those parts house parts needed some love to make them work and it was not uncommon to run across out of spec lowers. CNC has improved the quality of the lowers a lot while keeping the cost down.

Sure, it is hard to beat an old Colt, early 90s Bushmaster, or an Eagle (was is Coal Valley?) but quality $400 ARs are easy to find now (yeah I know, that was true of a Colt SP1 in 1968 too).