Originally Posted By: Pablo
Originally Posted By: Ws6
Rough bores will chew gas rings up, too, etc. Seen all sorts of issues from "cheap" BCG's.
Agree. Pretty much every low cost BCG has plenty of burrs and roughness that can be nicely cleaned up. If you can live without the nice coating and have the skills - a rough BCG can be deburred, the edges broken and polished without getting too crazy (DON'T GET THE DREMEL OUT!!). I was "forced" into this when the 10mm bolt supplied with my RMW was a hunk of junk (other than the extra machining for 10mm on the bolt face, extractor and base of carrier). There was a huge hunk of metal in the carrier bore. I had to use a couple carbon scraping tools and valve lapping compound in there, but it came out nice. I changed over to a one piece ring, mainly because the three supplied rings were ruined from the get go. Also the cam pin and the slot were terribly burred and nasty. The bolt would hardly move, now it's like butter smooth - like roller bearing smooth. So I did the same to a much lesser degree on my 5.56 and 6.8. All like butter - but seal great.
And what about the gas-keys and bolts? Staked properly with quality hardware? Are you going to replace that, or just let it surprise you when they shear? Really man, I get being frugal, but this is just being cheap when quality BCG's are so affordable and available.