Celebrating the Armalite AR-180
Grabbed a copy of FreeCAD and went to work today teaching myself from scratch.
I couldn’t do any old project so I drew up a trunion for an AR-180B.
I reverse engineered the dimensions from my original upper I found it to be a lot of fun.
Just a quick picture.
The hole takes a modified AR-15 barrel extension, just like the original 180B.
I am still not sure how the original was retained other than a press fit.
Just got my sample parts from Chuck and I must say, they look awesome. I really like the light park job that he has done on these and the quality is outstanding.
The Bolt hold opens need a bit of a tweak on one bend so that is holding us up a bit. They should be ready to go shortly so get your name on the list by emailing me at rkelley91 at gmail dot com and I will put you on the list.
These parts along with an AR-15 lower parts kit will allow you to populate a Nodak NDS-18S lower without having to buy an AR-180B first.
You can then use that lower on your original AR-180, AR-180B, and Vulcan V-18. Using one on an original 180 will allow you to use standard AR-15 STANAG magazines instead of 180 mags.
Pricing is $125 per set, shipped and insured in the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii slightly higher. No international sales at this time.
Now for some pics of this set in my SBR lower.
Reader Eric sent me a link to an older article on The Firearm Blog that talks about a mysterious Brazilian AR-18 Carbine.
I think that we can actually find enough clues in this one known picture to postulate that this is a factory made prototype.
This gun has some of the of the features found only on the earliest AR-18 guns.
If we compare it to the first prototype SN: X001, we see that they both share the straight charging handle design and the lack of a dust cover.
I believe it may have been built around the same time as the first AR-180 prototype seen here. It shares many more features with this model SN: 002. Straight charging handle, no dust cover, dovetail scope mount, stock folding mechanism.
Finally, the original authors speculation about the front fore-grip not being a factory part is shown to be false when looking at the production model AR-18 Shorty, SN: A5689. Clearly they are both modified factory hand grips.
I think this is a very cool variant of the AR-18 and is quite reminiscent of the early M-16 carbine, the Model 605.
Of course after seeing the picture of this AR-18 Carbine, I am going to have to build one. Who’s with me?
Try as I might I was unable to find a link to the original SAR article “The Lost Armalites” that I “borrowed” the majority of these pictures from. If anyone has a link so I may give them credit and a link-back, I would appreciate it. Also if anyone has the original magazine and would like to sell me a copy, I would like to add one to my collection.
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Not exactly a competition but since Chuck at GunLab.net was nice enough to loan me his Leader Dynamics T2 MkV rifle, I used that opportunity take some pics and compare it to it’s direct decedent, the Australian Automatic Arms SAP.
Not exactly a visit to ArmaLite but a visit to the location of the Costa Mesa location.
I was working in Torrance CA last week so I took a little jaunt south to see for myself where my gun was made.
As some of you may have seen before the building where they set up shop is now a body shop and a busy one at that.
I didn’t want to bother them so I just took some pics and did not go inside.
