Just got back from my local Tucson gun show and they had no less than three AR-180’s for sale.
I was shocked to see so many out in the wild.
Two Costa Mesa’s and one early Sterling with the black finish. All in excellent shape.
Doesn’t anyone take theirs shooting, besides me?
It’s really fun to shoot the breeze with the guys at the gun shows who are into these cool guns. I didn’t come home with any and I hope to see more of them hit the market in the future.
Good luck with your hunt.
Speaking of the hunt, I am looking for an AR-180 upper hand guard that is damaged at the front to cut down for my Shorty Project. I have a lower that is broken but I refuse to cut up a perfectly good upper.
Let me know through the contact form if you have any leads for me.
I generally take one of mine out with each outing.
I’m really happy to see a site dedicated to AR 180s, most people have no idea what I’m talking about and I probably bore the hell out of them carrying on about the virtues of the 180. I’m very fortunate to have a nice collection of 14 rifles, many spare parts and a ton of original mags and scopes.
Two of my favorite rifles are HOWAs that were converted from AR 18s, they’re great shooters and the finish is beautiful. I’ve heard a couple of tales about their date of manufacture and would like to know for sure when they were built and how many were built. Mine are in the S0001xx and S0002xx range. One has a very unusual pistol grip, the grip is marked AR 18, but is shortened and has a stud holding it to the lower. The sling swivel is attached to the stud, it appears to be a factory job, but I have no way of knowing for sure. I sent a picture to Pete Fleis and he wasn’t sure if it was factory or not.
Two of my Sterlings are low serial numbers and are spot welded only with no reinforcing welds like the higher numbered rifles
If I can get someone more computer savvy to help, I’ll try to post some pictures of my rifles.
I don’t have any way for you to directly post pictures here but if you send them to me I would be more than happy to post them for you.
Let me know the best way to get pictures to you and I’ll rope a friend into helping me tackle the technical side of it.
I’ve got one mag with the “leaping lion” logo on the floor plate, it came with one of the HOWAS. Anyone else seen one like it ?
Just shoot me a message through the “Contact Us” link at the top op the page and I can get you my e-mail address.
I traded off my only Howa magazine to a good friend but I still have pictures of it. They are harder to find than most other 20 round mags except the Sterling curved 20 rounder.
I would love to see pictures.