Wade Brown Posted October 27, 2015 Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 I purchased my DPMS LR308 almost 8 years ago, I had been thinking about buying one and then Obama got elected and I was worried about another Assault Weapons Ban so I ordered immediately after he was elected. I was never happy with how it shot it would shoot about 1.25 MOA consistently with reloads, I have reloaded for almost 40 years and spend a lot of time shooting F-class at 1,000 yards so my reloading skills are not too bad. I shot maybe 1,000 rounds through the LR308 trying to find a load it was happy with, there were quite a few loads that shot 1.25 MOA but that did not make me happy. I have not shot the LR308 in maybe 4 years. I tried multiple triggers that have worked well for me in the past on other ARs so triggers probably were not the problem, I assumed barrel.I have shot a lot of 6.5's and love how those bullets do at 1,000 yards. I have a number of 6.5 mm blanks at the shop and a lathe, a dangerous combination, or at least an expensive one. So I decided to build a 260 Rem upper to put on my LR308 Lower, I looked around and I saw that some people had bought PSA PA10 uppers and used these on their DPMS lowers, the price was right so I ordered a blem PA10 upper, a BCG and some other parts since I was making an order.I got the blemmed upper yesterday and I could not find a blem and the machined looked fine, the same can be said for the BCG. This AM I pulled the LR308 out of the safe, took the upper off, put the PA10 upper with charging hamdle and BCG on it, on the LR308 lower, the takedown pin went right in and all looked good. So I tried to opon the bolt, and it came back about 1.5 inches back and bound up in the buffer tube and would go no further. I assumed an alignment problem, I put the DPMS bolt in the PA10 upper and it bound up the same way. I took out the takedown pin to see if I could get the bolt to operate if the upper floated a bit, the bolt operated as it should with a little slop in the assembly. The slop allowed the BCG and buffer tube to align themselves. Floating the upper in this way allowed operation with both BCG's.So I called PSA customer service and repeatedly heard "We only guarantee compatibility with our lowers." or something along those lines repeatedly. I asked him if he had heard of many people using PA10 uppers on DPMS lowers and I just got the above statement about compatibility. I was trying to see if this was a rare occurrence thinking maybe the PA10 upper is out of spec, the compatibility statement did not give me any information. So I decided to ask the hoards of owners of 308 AR's on the web for their collective wisdom.Does the PA10 upper usually work on the DPMS lowers?It seems strange that PSA would engineer an upper that is about 0.003" away from compatibility with one of the common lowers on the market, I realize their desire is to sell both uppers and lowers but 0.003" movement might provide a larger overall market for them.TIA for you collective wisdom,wade Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
washguy Posted October 27, 2015 Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 Wade my wisdom is to buy a DPMS upper to go with your DPMS lower and stay away from the psa crapola ...in the ar308 arena there is no such thing is in spec as they all kinda do their own thing..some people do run into the tolerance stacking problemo ...but why couldnt you just re barrel the original upper? unless you wanted to keep the 308 I guess Wash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EasyEJL Posted October 27, 2015 Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 There is a reason that PSA 308 uppers/lowers are so cheap.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wade Brown Posted October 27, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 but why couldnt you just re barrel the original upper? unless you wanted to keep the 308 I guess Wash I may want to shoot the 308 upper as a 308 with another barrel if I can get the 260 to shoot, that was why I did not want to tear down the 308 upper. I will probably put the PSA stuff back in the box and ship it back.wade Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
washguy Posted October 27, 2015 Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 I may want to shoot the 308 upper as a 308 with another barrel if I can get the 260 to shoot, that was why I did not want to tear down the 308 upper. I will probably put the PSA stuff back in the box and ship it back.wadeWade good choice! Wash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
survivalshop Posted October 27, 2015 Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 Wade good choice! Wash I agree . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
392heminut Posted October 28, 2015 Report Share Posted October 28, 2015 (edited) Yup, send it back. This is not the first time this issue has come up between PSA 308 uppers on DPMS 308 lowers, it's fairly common. Edited October 28, 2015 by 392heminut fat fingers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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