• Frank's Lesson's Contest

    We want to see your skills! Post a video between now and November 1st showing what you've learned from Frank's lessons and 3 people will be selected to win a free shirt. Good luck everyone!

    Create a channel Learn more
  • Having trouble using the site?

    Contact support

9mm AR uppers?

The 9mm adapters/inserts/dedicated lowers allow use of 9mm stick magazines and provide anchor points for the 9mm-specific ejector and feed-ramp.
Don't think there's any way to make a 9mm AR without them.
 
Last edited:
Has anyone made a 9mm AR upper that doesn't require all kinda of adapter blocks / mods to the AR lower?

I'm thinking SBR.... maybe with a can....

Not sure I'm following your line of thinking here...

There is no way to hold the considerably smaller 9mm magazine in place without either: a) a dedicated magwell lower (RRA, CMMG, DDLE and others have made 9mm lowers with a specific 9mm ONLY magwell for use with Colt pattern...even Glock pattern mags...of course, that means no going to alternative calibers/AR-15 mags with that lower); or b) some sort of magazine block/adapter in a standard AR-15 lower that will allow you to remove the block and run any AR-15-based caliber/mag.

What are you wanting to do that gives you pause about running a mag adapter on a stnd AR-15 lower with any given 9mm upper receiver group?

You can virtually eliminate the "one-off" parts in the lower with a proper conversion and the correct mag block so that all you really have to swap out to go from adapted 9mm back to AR-15 standard mag/calibers by dumping the mag block out and swapping your buffer components.
 
Oly Arms used to make an upper / metal mag combination that worked with a standard unmodified lower. I wondered if anyone else did.

It was an absolute, unholy abortion of a system...PERIOD...despite the acclaimed "advantages" of being able to run their upper on an unmodified AR-15 lower, buffer, spring, etc.!! The old Oly system used modified Sten mags (feedlips modded along with mag catch cuts into the mag body) which also had a steel adapter block welded onto the spine of the mag. They didn't work terribly well then and even with Sten mags at the time being fairly abundant at $5-7/mag, it was time consuming and costly to @#$% around with modifying the mags and then, some worked and some didn't work.

To my knowledge, nobody is doing the sort of system you are talking about at present.
 
20131019_104439.jpg

This was my build. CMMG dedicated lower, custom built upper.
 
The mag block is really no big problem.

The major manufacturers are Hahn and RRA, Spikes makes a version of the RRA. These are one piece blocks that are ether installed from the top or the bottom of the magwell.

The RRA style block is a bottom loader and has a tension mechanism that you tighten to snug it into the magwell.

Hahn offers a top loading, bottom loading as well as a dedicated block.