Re: DPMS 308 OR 260 Accuracy ?
I bought one of the DPMS LR308's with 24 inch barrel and all the trick stuff I could order on it. I wanted the rifle built from the factory with paperwork showing that I didn't add the trick stuff after I received the rifle.
Initially the rifle had a short throat. I had horrible over pressure problems, difficulty extracting unfired rounds. The rounds that weren't fired would come out with the lands deeply engraved into the ogive of the bullet. Primers were flattened and flowing, and the brass was obviously pressed way to hard against the bolt.
I contacted DPMS and they said return the rifle along with a magazine. I wrote a detailed letter about the short throat, but never said anything about feeding problems because I hadn't had any feeding problems. I asked that they provide me a copy of the work sheet showing what they did to the rifle as I wanted to keep it with all my records on the rifle.
The rifle came back without any paperwork. So I called DPMS and they said they swapped out a magazine, and that fixed the feeding issue. I reminded them that I never had any feeding issues, and asked about the short throat problem. They said everything checked out fine, and they didn't do anything to the throat.
Funny thing was that the same rounds that used to come out of the rifle with the lands engraved into the ogive now came out normally. None of the rounds fired after the rifle's return showed any of the previous pressure signs.
The opinion of the gunsmith who witnessed the early problems with the rifle, and shot it after it's return was that FN properly reamed out the throat after they received the rifle back. They (FN) just didn't want to have to admit to a quality control problem.
The part about this that disturbs me, it basic honesty. If I bought a one of custom rifle, I would be pissed if the smith returned the rifle with a short throat.
But as DPMS makes thousands of rifles, it just stands to reason that on occasion, reamers will wear out prematurely, or someone might not notice that a reamer had worn out prematurely, hence a few rifles came out with short throats. I would have been far more comfortable with DPMS simply admitting that one got past them, and they fixed the problem, and are sorry for the inconvenience.
When they deny the problem, it makes me distrust them about just about everything else after that.
The rifle didn't shoot that well for about 400 rounds, but now has settled into shooting quite well with heavier bullets like 168/175 grain bullets. I think that when the new throat got broken in, things are working quite well.
I was really disappointed in how DPMS handled the problem. You still might want to give them a try. I wouldn't buy a rifle from them again, but it is your money... If I were doing it over, and hadn't had the experience I did, I might buy DPMS receivers and have someone else build the rifle using a Kreiger, Schneider, Obermeyer, or similar barrel.