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Well, I just now pulled it out of my rifle again... I tried to slip a small piece of paper down in between the bolts and the carrier and was unable to. I guess the bolt heads are serrated/textured/jimped. I'm thinking that might be why I can't get paper down in there. Either that or I need to find a thinner piece of paper. Does anyone have a photo of the bolt Spikes uses in their nickel BCG?
 
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I found out I can't yell loud enough to make any Company care.

So now I just fix things myself.

Car, Gun, Washing machine, Fridge, Hot water heater, whatever.
$200 gun part. Or $45,000 Car. All the same.

You'll go mad trying to make a company ''Make things right''. ;)
 
Generally speaking, the Gas key is put on with machine screws, if you want machine screws that are not serrated they're custom order. You really don't need the "custom tool" for this, all you need is a high quality sharp nosed punch and a 8-oz hammer and a block of wood.

For reference, red locktite is pretty pointless to put on this, the gas key is probably takes most of the heat during the firing cycle as the gas tube.

If you're really this concerned about it, try unscrewing the machine screws, I'm guessing you'll find they're in there a lot better than you think they are. From what I can see in the photos everything looks to be sufficient, granted this is not a typical staking system, even then, I've had guns where I had to remove the gas key and didn't bother restaking the screws, and it never came loose. Granted, I wasn't carrying it into combat, nor was I firing full auto. All the staking does is add a little bit of extra resistance to coming lose during vibration or heat cycling.

I get that you spent your good hard earned money on something you don't believe meets your expectations, return it. We all get burned every now and again, even the most savvy buyers out there. If you can return it.

If you were actually having a problem (like you were shooting and the gun stopped working/jammed because the carrier key came loose) I would give a lot more credence to your complaints, but for the moment it seems you're just being persnickety and have no idea what you're looking at/doing.
 
If you use a sharp pointed punch its going to look like this...:(
gaskey.jpg

With a slightly modified punch you can make nice looking stakes without any fancy tools. I use rawhide jaws in a 5 1/2" vise to secure the carrier and you get nice looking stakes like this. :)
These are actually a little bit deep, but it sure isn't ever going to move.
gaskey2.jpg
 
If you can't get anything down the sides, that's good.

Remember the top of the stake jammed against the top of the bolt head isn't necessarily needed, you only need interference at some point down the side of the bolt head.
 
image.jpeg
Here is my PSA bolt carrier group. You can see the threads on the side of the bolt head. With the staking pushing into the threads, I can't get them to budge at all. I don't think you have anything to worry about with yours.
 
If you take them out don't put them back. Use new screws. Using the old screws is more likely to cause a failure than the original stake job

Never reuse gas key bolts
 
If you use a sharp pointed punch its going to look like this...:(
View attachment 313322

With a slightly modified punch you can make nice looking stakes without any fancy tools. I use rawhide jaws in a 5 1/2" vise to secure the carrier and you get nice looking stakes like this. :)
These are actually a little bit deep, but it sure isn't ever going to move.
View attachment 313323

You can either stake the screw, or stake the key, I usually stake the screw JIC it needs replacement, I'll dig through my bin-o-parts and see if I can find one I staked. usually I do 3-points on the outside of the hex-flat where there's more metal. Again, like I said, I've never had one move, but I've only done carrier key replacement a few dozen times, but I've worked on hundreds maybe thousands of AR/M* platforms.
 

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