Lightened parts for DI 9mm AR.

[22boomer]

I don't know if this is of any value to you or not. I had built a 17 Reed Express AR and found that the reciprocating parts were just too heavy for the powder charge I wanted to use. The Gas system was the pistol length type and I didn't want to use heavy powder charges that might damage the brass which is hard to find at times and difficult to form in 17 caliber. I lightened the buffer which was the easy part then I lightened the carrier which was not easy for me since I don't have any milling equipment. The picture below is a carrier a fellow I know did for about the same reason I did mine.


I just figured you could move the gas port out further on the DI 9mm AR so not so much junk got back into the receiver when using something like Winchester white box 9mm ammo. Just a thought -- not sure if there is any value to it at all.

[HMC710]

Hey 22!
Good to hear from you. I was really amazed when I went down the lightened carrier route to find there was not a huge difference vs the cost. I got some carriers from a mfg "in the white" before they were heat treated and turned them into swiss cheese, just enough left to function, then heat treated them for testing. Also got a couple of the JP aluminum carriers to see what would happen with those. I ended up not using any of them because of the added costs. JP has a low mass carrier that looks sweet tho. I think I've seen a few others coming out with them also. And if you remember, our DI runs super light hand loads

[22boomer]

I didn't know you already tried the light weight route. I had seen other 9mm DI setups and those were running kinda dirty when using commercial Winchester white box or other inexpensive high volume 9mm ammo. sorry for the useless info.

[HMC710]

Talk about running dirty..... my Tok BB is terrible! Its worse my 50 cal BP upper. Of course the 50 cal is kinda hard to mag dump