POF Renegade 7.62x39 upper quality control ...

[amstel78]

POF used to be a tier-1 manufacturer. Then Frank died. Besides the point, I feel your pain. They had my P308 Edge and a Griffin suppressor for 3 months because it was way overgassed - EVEN WITHOUT THE CAN. The normal thing would have been to drill new ports in the gas plug so it'd run normally suppressed and unsupressed based on M80 ball. What did they do after 3 months? Not. A. Damn. Thing. They sent the rifle back with a stronger buffer spring. I ended up having to run an 8.5oz buffer as well as a SpringCo Orange spring just to make it reliable.

I can't recommend POF any longer and I own close to $5k worth of their products including a POF Revolution in 6.5CM. Even though the Revolution 6.5CM functions fine 100%, my last experience with them pissed me off so much that I'm dumping all my POF branded gear. Enough is enough.

[Misery Loves Shotguns]

POF used to be a tier-1 manufacturer. Then Frank died. Besides the point, I feel your pain. They had my P308 Edge and a Griffin suppressor for 3 months because it was way overgassed - EVEN WITHOUT THE CAN. The normal thing would have been to drill new ports in the gas plug so it'd run normally suppressed and unsupressed based on M80 ball. What did they do after 3 months? Not. A. Damn. Thing. They sent the rifle back with a stronger buffer spring. I ended up having to run an 8.5oz buffer as well as a SpringCo Orange spring just to make it reliable.

I can't recommend POF any longer and I own close to $5k worth of their products including a POF Revolution in 6.5CM. Even though the Revolution 6.5CM functions fine 100%, my last experience with them pissed me off so much that I'm dumping all my POF branded gear. Enough is enough.

Damn ... it sounds like I made the right decision not to send it back to them; I'll drill it out myself if it comes to that. I was briefly proud to own a POF upper but not so much anymore. The strange thing is that I took both uppers apart and the POF actually has a larger port than my other barrel; .091" on the POF and .083" for the rifle that was overgassed. I took it completely apart, checked the alignment, and put it back together. I've got a few extra carbine buffer springs too so I cut a few coils off of each to experiment with.

[DavidH]

AHHHH!! I can*t stand this attitude in people. Don*t take this the wrong way. Ya know? I don*t mean anything negative. It*s just I want people to know what I know. Know the BS & lies in the manufacturing world. It*s frustrating.

OP, research, learn & execute! Be PROUD to own YOUR upper....one YOU build!

Here is my last build. It*s all super high quality parts...many of which I highly doubt you or most people have even heard of! I built it to the exact specs I wanted! Didn*t have to replace anything after the fact. If I had my pick of this AR, a POF, KAC, BCM, LMT or any other AR named....I would STILL take this one. And it cost me a fraction of the price of one the top shelf ARs. I*ve owned many, many ARs since 2005. Yet I*ve NEVER purchased a manufacturer*s piece. Only built! And I*m very proud of that.

[Misery Loves Shotguns]

AHHHH!! I can*t stand this attitude in people. Don*t take this the wrong way. Ya know? I don*t mean anything negative. It*s just I want people to know what I know. Know the BS & lies in the manufacturing world. It*s frustrating.

OP, research, learn & execute! Be PROUD to own YOUR upper....one YOU build!

Here is my last build. It*s all super high quality parts...many of which I highly doubt you or most people have even heard of! I built it to the exact specs I wanted! Didn*t have to replace anything after the fact. If I had my pick of this AR, a POF, KAC, BCM, LMT or any other AR named....I would STILL take this one. And it cost me a fraction of the price of one the top shelf ARs. I*ve owned many, many ARs since 2005. Yet I*ve NEVER purchased a manufacturer*s piece. Only built! And I*m very proud of that.

Well, I've built several but mistakenly thought it would be better to have a factory built upper. We all know how that turned out and by the time I'm done with this fucking thing, it will pretty much have been built by me. I decided to buy a new gas block for it because I found multiple other reports of their uppers being undergassed and they determined it was because of a defect or inherent flaw in the dictator gas block. What other explanation could there possibly be for having a larger port but somehow less gas? I had a wojtek once and the screw that held the adjustment in place kept backing out and eventually came completely out, got lost, and I took the whole thing off when I got home. I did look at their website anyway but they were all sold out so I got an Aero Precision adjustable block.

[DavidH]

Well, Wojtek sells them, but is not the maker. They buy & resell...along with half a dozen other shops. It*s the only Gas Block I*ve used on several rifle builds for the last few years. But yes, I can see that. Screws coming loose happens to many gas blocks. How long ago did you use one? I am curious though what screw? I*ve never had one come loose. It*s the normal duel screw adjusting/retention that several Adjustable gas blocks use. Did you locktite the smaller screw after adjustment?

[Gunplummer]

I used to run into this on 5.56 rifles, especially with the tapered pin front sight assembly. Some times the bleeder hole in the barrel was not in alignment with the hole in the sight assembly and it really cuts a lot off. For some reason every guy that told me about this and sent it back under warranty ended up having the port opened up. A couple of them had the gas key replaced (Hell if I know why) and sent back to them and they still did not work. So, they sent them back again. Some had their port opened up, some gave up and came to me. I have to laugh when I see MIL-spec arguments on the forums. This is the kind of stuff you get with "Enhanced" Mil-spec parts or parts "Better" Mil-spec than others.

[Misery Loves Shotguns]

Well, Wojtek sells them, but is not the maker. They buy & resell...along with half a dozen other shops. It*s the only Gas Block I*ve used on several rifle builds for the last few years. But yes, I can see that. Screws coming loose happens to many gas blocks. How long ago did you use one? I am curious though what screw? I*ve never had one come loose. It*s the normal duel screw adjusting/retention that several Adjustable gas blocks use. Did you locktite the smaller screw after adjustment?

If I had to guess, it was probably 2017. No, I didn't use loctite. I figured it would get so hot that it would melt off anyway.

I used to run into this on 5.56 rifles, especially with the tapered pin front sight assembly. Some times the bleeder hole in the barrel was not in alignment with the hole in the sight assembly and it really cuts a lot off. For some reason every guy that told me about this and sent it back under warranty ended up having the port opened up. A couple of them had the gas key replaced (Hell if I know why) and sent back to them and they still did not work. So, they sent them back again. Some had their port opened up, some gave up and came to me. I have to laugh when I see MIL-spec arguments on the forums. This is the kind of stuff you get with "Enhanced" Mil-spec parts or parts "Better" Mil-spec than others.

The funny thing about that is that when I first assembled the original upper, I apparently misaligned it by mistake but it ran perfectly fine. I then bought a jig to dimple the barrel and that's when the real problems started; constant, nightmarish double feeds and failures to extract mostly. If not for having the other barrel to compare gas port size to, I would have certainly opened the gas port up and reassembled it. It's already larger though. I was in such a vile mood for a few days after that last trip to the range that in between thoughts of how I wanted to throw the fucking gun off a cliff or into a goddamn river, I considered a reduced power buffer spring, lightweight carrier, checking the gas tube, checking the gas key, drilling out the gas port like I mentioned, and I also removed the buffer retaining pin to allow me to more easily switch buffer springs and different weight buffers. Having said that, if this new gas block that's coming tomorrow doesn't get this goddamn curse running, I'm done.

Adding to the problems with the POF upper, I noticed that the upper is cut on one side for .30 caliber bullets but not the other. It's .30 caliber on the left side, .22 caliber on the right. I don't know if that will cause feeding issues or not but I'm getting less enthusiastic about this every day.

[amstel78]

Adding to the problems with the POF upper, I noticed that the upper is cut on one side for .30 caliber bullets but not the other. It's .30 caliber on the left side, .22 caliber on the right. I don't know if that will cause feeding issues or not but I'm getting less enthusiastic about this every day.

I'm having trouble visualizing this. Pictures?

POF supposedly has a lifetime warranty as well as a 100% satisfaction guarantee. I'd raise hell with them first before tossing it off a cliff if I were you.

[DavidH]

When you say *Cut for 30 caliber bullets on the left side, 22 caliber on the right*, are you referring to the feed ramps in the upper & barrel extension?

I was confused at that as well. The feed ramps are the only thing I can think that would be sized differently & have a LEFT & RIGHT side.

I*ve always been very lucky with my builds. For 15 years... the beginning of the build culture right after the Billary Clinton AWB expired in *04, (regardless of what some say about building ARs before this...) I*ve never had any major problems with a single build.

[amstel78]

I build as well. But sometimes I just want something different. The POF had that in terms of their lowers and design. Unfortunately their CS sucks and they don't really stand behind their warranty. 100% satisfaction guaranteed? Yeah right...