Now that Windham Weaponry is done, and old Bushmaster hasn’t been a thing since they sold to Freedom Group, this might actually be somewhat of a collector’s item.
I had a ban-era 16” heavy CLGS pipe take-off from one of my brother’s AR’s I tricked-out for him with a threaded pipe, JP handguard, etc.
I had it re-profiled, fluted and dimpled, cut to 14.5” and threaded, made it lightweight. Shot really well even with 55gr fodder.
One thing about Bushmaster is that they had their barrel metallurgy and chrome-lining down really well. The other parts were mostly sub-standard non-spec VISMOD imitations, but the barrels were good.
I always wanted a 14.5” fluted H-BAR, but never got one. Got a 16” H-BAR fluted back in the 2000s.
I sold a lot of their ban-era carbines with the Y-Comps and fixed M4 waffle stocks, and some of those guns came back with loose gas keys. If you were going to shoot them high-volume, you really had to go over them and replace a lot of components to get them up-to-task. They tended to be accurate though.
The biggest lesson about Bushmaster is how important brand recognition is. That name and the logo were the highest-selling "AR-15” SKUs in the 1990s-2000s. When he sold to Freedom Group, they cut the Windham facility production and sourced parts from DPMS’s chain, which they also bought. You can distinguish between these rifles by looking at the snake logo to see if the Bushmaster ARM assault rifle/pistol bullpup is in the logo or not.
Then Freedom Group bankrupted their Bushmaster brand, the DPMS brand, the Remington brand, and sold the scraps off.
If you can find that FSB, handguard cap, A2 handguards, and install a rifle length gas tube properly to put it back into original configuration, I would consider that. Probably isn’t worth the effort now, but might be down the road.
If you want a short-term fix, sell the A2 upper to someone into Retro builds so they can do a 727 carbine, or M16A2. There are a lot of kids out there with imitation M16A2s built on M4 uppers with detachable carry handles.
. Still going to try and get in on the bidding when the list is done.
