is the Olympic Arms K74UR upper any good?

AlphaBacon

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Minuteman
Jun 3, 2020
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Hi, I am planing on building an AR in 5.45x39 and it seems the K74UR upper from Olympic Arms is my only option at the moment, I was wondering if anyone has experience with this upper as I can't find any reviews of it.
 
have you though about building an AR-47 instead ?? Doing a 74 is going to take quite a bit of trial & error to get it to function correctly ! Mostly due to 74 commie rounds have Very hard primers !!

I have but but I would prefer a more intermediate round and part of why I'm building it is for the uniqueness of it, as well as it wouldn't require a custom lower to fit the magazine. I know some companies used to sell ARs in 5.45 that worked well unfortunately the only thing I can find from those is a ballistic advantage barrel on gunbroker going for $900. A few website seem to sell bolt assembles I could experiment with which ones work well but I can't afford a few bolt assembles if I'm buying a $500 upper and a $900 barrel is far out of my price range.
 
Hi, I am planing on building an AR in 5.45x39 and it seems the K74UR upper from Olympic Arms is my only option at the moment, I was wondering if anyone has experience with this upper as I can't find any reviews of it.
My Olympic Arms 5.45x39 upper has been flawless.
Many thousands of rounds down the pipe...all steel case of course, most of it 7N6 that was corrosive. You have to stay right on top of cleaning it.

I bought a bunch of used mags for that round and half of them were C-Products and the others were from others. Only the C-Products mags worked correctly or had followers that didn’t allow the rounds to tip as you got down to few rounds.
 
Unless you have a mountain of 5.45x39, you won't save any money shooting 5.45 vs 5.56

And I've never met anyone who had a regular AR chambered in 5.45x39 or 7.62x39 that didn't have problems with the magazines.

But it's a free country and so spend your money as you see fit.
 
The correct mags are the key.

C-Products has both calibers figured out.
Zero problems running 5.45 or 7.62 x 39 on AR platform at all.
 
STAY AWAY FROM OLY!!!!

I'm assuming you're new to this so I'll take it easy.

They were down the street from Ft. Lewis, their shop. Figured it'd be nice to have a mfg. only about six miles from post that could do custom shit for us. And after all, they'd been contracted to test out the SOPMOD series of shit (why I'll never know?). Anyway, they used to run this ad about their FIRSH handguard, rail tube. Cheap. It was held on with two bolts that clamped it on. Ad for it apparently an SF guy who thought the best thing about it was "it didn't whistle when he HALO'd"? Come the fuck on. It would shoot loose, guess that didn't bother the SF guy, and they weren't interested in hearing about any modifications. Gas blocks blew off downrange, not interested in pinning them.

At the time we were inventing the whole SDM thing and really could have used a good mfg. willing to work with us. They weren't it.

Also, back once upon a time, any weapon sold as a pistol, just one model in a limited run could do it, and if it used a rifle round it would now be considered a pistol round. Ie, NO MORE AP AMMO. Oly did this and single handed thanks to them they were able to kill the sales of x39 AP ammo. No apologies for it. They quit making the POS after a while but what's done is done and they're in circulation now.

For the life of me I can't understand why you'd want to use those rounds in this platform. 5.56 or .300BLK is what you want, .300BLK has ballistics very close to AK but much, much better platform, ammo, not to mention the whole suppressability deal.

IF you DO buy Oly, you'd do well to join their own forum to talk about it because I think even the barfcommers will laugh at you if you mention owning one of these things, let alone guys on here.

Most ALL these cheap AR/AK types don't function. They're junk range toys for Fudds. There are exceptions but they're not worth it.

There ARE/WERE options for an AR that used AK mags, I don't know what came of it and I can't recall who made it but it was originally designed during the kickoff of the wars for SF and other guys to have ability to use pickup mags and ammo in a AR platform weapon. Brits hired out (Lancaster?) to produce a very high end AK that's still an AK but has the accuracy and tolerances of an AR. I think those were custom made for SAS though.

IF you want a weapon in these calibers, why not get the weapon it was designed for? A good AK is still a reliable beast.
 
I wasn’t implying a Olympic produced 7.62x39, but more a general statement made about the AR platform shooting x39. If you take your time and build it correctly, it will fire, and fire well. I had an AK47 and 74 and I liked both, wish I never had got rid of either. The AR variant does not have the appeal and never will, but does not mean it can’t be a cheap ammo blaster that is lego compatible for easier mods and part swaps. I also have an SBR 300BLK and it is fun to shoot.
 
I’m going to order another K74UR upper right now.

You are mad.


I wasn’t implying a Olympic produced 7.62x39, but more a general statement made about the AR platform shooting x39. If you take your time and build it correctly, it will fire, and fire well. I had an AK47 and 74 and I liked both, wish I never had got rid of either. The AR variant does not have the appeal and never will, but does not mean it can’t be a cheap ammo blaster that is lego compatible for easier mods and part swaps. I also have an SBR 300BLK and it is fun to shoot.

No, Oly doesn't make ammo. They made a "pistol" chambered in x39. In US AP ammo cannot be sold for a pistol. And so, that's how Oly fucked America out of imported AP x39 ammo so they could produce a POS and oversell it to ignorant kids that don't know any better.

If you wanna shoot x39 there are better platforms. Like the one made for it.

Has nothing to do with taking time or building it right. Has more to do with geometry and the magazines.

Turns out SF doesn't really run and gun, discarding their rifles for combat pickups and using whatever mags and ammo they can find on the enemy. Turns out they have their own supply chain and needed none of this shit. Also turns out most civilians knew better and didn't fall for it.

There was talks about banning M855 --again thanks to Oly-- over a goddamn AR pistol. Things have changed I guess and nobody considers M855 AP --because if they did, it'd be Oly you could thank for getting it banned too.
 
You are mad.




No, Oly doesn't make ammo. They made a "pistol" chambered in x39. In US AP ammo cannot be sold for a pistol. And so, that's how Oly fucked America out of imported AP x39 ammo so they could produce a POS and oversell it to ignorant kids that don't know any better.

If you wanna shoot x39 there are better platforms. Like the one made for it.

Has nothing to do with taking time or building it right. Has more to do with geometry and the magazines.

Turns out SF doesn't really run and gun, discarding their rifles for combat pickups and using whatever mags and ammo they can find on the enemy. Turns out they have their own supply chain and needed none of this shit. Also turns out most civilians knew better and didn't fall for it.

There was talks about banning M855 --again thanks to Oly-- over a goddamn AR pistol. Things have changed I guess and nobody considers M855 AP --because if they did, it'd be Oly you could thank for getting it banned too.
Yeah they made the OA94 and the OA96 or some shit, one was skelotonized and one wasn’t, one had a fixed mag to avoid GCA68 bullshit weight requirement, but both didn’t make it very far. I wasn’t saying Olympic made ammo, was talking about the platform only.
 
You are mad.

What’s my login again?

Both my 5.45 and 7.62 x 39 ARs have been flawless. Thousands and thousands of steel case rounds have gone down range without a hiccup - once I found the right mags. It seems every problem ever associated with these calibers in the AR platform is because of poorly designed mags or followers in the mags. Once that’s fixed - they are just regular old ARs. The 5.45 x 39 rifle is a tack driver.

The part of this conversation that’s cracking me up is somebody bagging on the rifle because it’s the “wrong” caliber for the shape of the rifle? Bwahahahahahaha. Let’s go shooting!