Re: Assembled/Complete AR's
I am very opinionated when it comes to magazines. Almost to the point of biased snobbery. Not necessarily over brand (although I do like some better than others), but I am biased over the material used to make the magazines, which makes me very unpopular on some forums.
My main train of thought, an auto loader gun is only ever going to be as good as the magazine that feeds it, so this is an area that I pay attention to and they are not all created equal.
I do own some Pmags and I am not bashing them directly because overall they're alright. Matter of fact, I have one Pmag that I modified to 10 rounds that is my primary 223 hunting magazine.
I also own a couple of the Israeli Orlite magazines, but they have a mesh wire support in them and seem to be more of a resin composition. Although I don't own any, I have also used thermolds, which are very similiar to the orlites.
I guess what I'm trying to say is although I know the rage is to own plastic magazines, they have inherent benefits like built in channels to keep the rounds seated and stacked correctly, but they have their own inherent shortfalls too.
Namely the body or the especially the feedlips becoming swollen/worn (especially when left loaded for long periods of time-why else do you think magpul included the little cappy thingy).
I have used every AR magazine in the AR world except for cammenga, troy and surefire 60 and 100 round "coffin" mags.
I have had far fewer magazine related problems from metal magazines with anti-tilt followers than I have with plastic mags of any kind.
Only time will tell how well the plastic they use is going to hold up. It's not uncommon at all to see cracks and things just develop on their own in old plastic items. Just look around you in your environment. Dashboards and interior plastic pieces crack with heat/cold cycles, kids toys left in the yard in the rain and weather often fall apart in a year or two, etc etc etc.
That's the main reason that the old zytel Mac 10 and Mac 11 magazines have the bad rep that they do. They just don't hold up long term.
But it's not a bit uncommon to see a WWII magazine with no bluing left on it and you can tell just by looking that it's been through hell and back, but stick it in a gun and it'll work just like it did back in the day when it was new.
Those are just a few of my thoughts on the subject.