Gunsmithing What's this "screw" in an M1A receiver?

[Gene Poole]

This is a Polytech M1A receiver I want to rebarrel with a surplus military barrel I've got laying around, but I've never seen this before in an M1A/M14 receiver. Looks like some kind of set screw or a staked pin of some kind to hold the barrel in place (as if the torque on these babies wasn't enough already). Anyone seen this before? Do I remove it (it looks staked in place) before attempting the barrel removal?

 

[John L]

Re: What's this "screw" in an M1A receiver?

Gene,
Yes it is a set screw and does need to be removed to get the barrel off. All 3 of my Poly's have this. If you can get hold of a copy of "The M14 Complete Assembly Guide" by Walt Kuleck and Clint McKee it covers removing this set screw. It can be a bugger but not impossible.

 

[Gene Poole]

Re: What's this "screw" in an M1A receiver?

Thanks. Just ordered it from Amazon.

 

[chansen49]

Re: What's this "screw" in an M1A receiver?



Dont the Polys have reverse threads?



Ch

 

[Gene Poole]

Re: What's this "screw" in an M1A receiver?

No reverse threads that I know of, but they do have metric threads on the muzzle where the flash hider connects and metric threads on the gas block. With a new barrel, you get good old GI threads on the muzzle and a GI gas block will take care of that.