I bought my first AR15 during the dark times of the '94 AWB - a DPMS A15. It was a hodge-podge of a rifle. An A1 upper receiver with a super-heavy barrel, .223 Remington chamber (not 5.56), interesting A2 handguards with a bipod stud, a pinned Wilson Combat compensator, an over-sized round forward assist, and, of course, no bayonet lug. The lower receiver was a standard lower with A2 furniture. To top things off, the rifle came with an "Ultralux" scope mounted to the carry handle.
Here she was not long after I purchased her next to the pre-ban mags I had for it:
The above rifle was a pig at about 10 pounds. It was accurate as long as the scope was kept on it - the rear iron sight could not be adjusted far enough to the right to compensate for the barrel's tendency to shoot way out to the left. Over time, the rifle sat and collected dust and I sold the complete lower receiver. Then the upper sat around collecting dust until I picked up a couple of stripped lowers and threw one together.
The rifle then began its morph into an A1 clone. I assembled the lower with an A1 pistol group and a standard parts kit with a single-stage trigger group. I located some A1 handguards and put them on the upper. I ditched the Ultralux scope for a cheap NC-Star Colt copy, since the iron sights were still useless. The rifle started looking better, but it still wasn't an accurate clone and it was still a heavy pig.
Here is the DPMS after stage-2 of evolution. It temporarily sported an A2 buttstock until I was able to find an M16 stock:
I kept the rifle with the annoyingly heavy barrel for while until I came across a website that sold reproduction M16 barrel assemblies. Score! For less than $200 I had a 20" M16A1 pencil barrel with a 1:9" twist and a 5.56 NATO chamber to replace the .223-chambered heavy barrel with unknown twist rate.
The new lightweight barrel above the original heavy barrel still mounted to the upper receiver:
The old heavy barrel removed compared to the new pencil barrel:
I installed the barrel, swapped over the A1 front sight post, sling swivel, and gas tube, screwed on an A1 flash suppressor, and inserted a new bolt carrier group. It came together nicely and I was impressed with the new weight - just over 6 and 1/2 pounds!
For the final touch, I removed the weird over-sized round forward assist and replaced it with the old teardrop-style forward assist:
Here is the weird oversized forward-assist next to a standard A2 FA:
Now the only original parts that remain from the original rifle are the ejection port cover assembly, the rear sight assembly, the upper receiver, and the charging handle. I sighted her in at 50 yards and test-fired 50 rounds through her the other day - she ran flawlessly and grouped nicely.
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Originally Posted by sevlex
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