Suggestions on 308Winchester Semi auto

BrokenSailor · Feb 19, 2012

I highly recommend the M14 as a SA .308. You will never need another rifle for most anything you want to hunt or kill in the world.

I frequent the gun shops and look for used M1as. I have found them from $1000-1200 in used condition. You just have to be there at the right time. Often times I have to wait to clear the weapon before I can pick it up. Find a gun shop that does a fair amount of consignment or used weapon sales. Maybe you will get lucky.

Wallygator · Feb 20, 2012

After seeing what you want to do with the rifle, I would say get one of the AR platforms in .308 with a 20" barrel. I love my M1A, but I also knew what I was getting myself into by getting one. If I had just wanted a high cap magazine fed .308, I would have chosen an AR platform.

Gun Mechanic · Feb 20, 2012

Here you go!

http://www.northwestfirearms.com/rifle-shotgun-classifieds/80434-m-14-polytech.html

Gun mechanic

iamme · Feb 20, 2012

Do a build on a Ma-Ten set.

evltwn · Feb 20, 2012

maybe this is going a different direction, but how about a CMP M1 Garand? The price is right and they are a blast to shoot...

tripleshotsplease · Feb 20, 2012

So this is my conclusion, seems like majority of you guys think the AR platform is going to be my best option on the table.
With that said, its time for me to start building an AR on my own in 308. Not only it'll get my hands dirty, but I can also customize it the way i prefer the set up.

Does anyone know who makes multical lowers up to 308 for lefty's?
a list of needed parts is what's next on my to-do list. with everyone's help, i'd knock this out in no time. I'm glad i found this forum,

Northwest Firearms, the Makkah of Gun whores.

kodiak61 · Feb 21, 2012

That is a very basic DPMS 308 I paid around $1300 total for back in 2007.

That is an FNAR I played with for awhile, I think I was into that one (minus optic) $1400ish.

Then began the M1A game... The far right is an SEI Crazy Horse I had made. I was lucky enough to at the time live 5 minutes from SEI in Tempe, AZ and could pester Ron and Andy on a daily basis to get the exact rifle I wanted. The middle rifle is early 80's standard M1A and the front rifle is seriel #00909 in an E2 stock tuned by SEI. A true Divine rifle that I paid too much for. The stock was not orange, the flash from my crappy camera made the wood look that color. I also owned other M1A's during that time including Poly's, loaded's, NM's, Super Matche's and Scouts. Those purchases and subsequent trades led me to the crazy horse. As all of the various M1A's I owned went to SEI (Smith Enterprises INC). I finally stopped buying them and taking them to Ron/Andy to get upgraded and just paid the piper and bought the big dog.

Forgot about that girl, had her awhile as well. LRB In a JAE stock with a Krieger NM barrel.

Another M1A, highly modified SOCOM version.

Rock River .308 This came after the M1A's and led to my POF purchase. Think I paid $1500ish for this before upgrading it.

I was doing the same thing you were, looking for the ultimate .308. At the time I was fortunate enough to have the funds and the contacts while living in Arizona to acquire such things.

After 5 years of range time, instruction and testing of all these rifles I ended up finally being happy and settling POF gas piston .308. A reason for this was the basic DPMS .308 pictured first shot every bit as well as "most" of the M1A's I had MUCH more money into. I decided to get back into that platform with some upgrades, thus the POF.

I dont want to say that it is better to start some sort of arguement, I really like the M1A platform and what can be done with them. However I, like many others in this thread believe that the AR10 platform is much better suited for my needes.

I will say this though, 800 yards is no joke. After thinking myself when I started this journey that I wanted a 1000 yard gun, after actually shooting at those distances with some instuction courses under my belt, I decided that if its that far away I could hide from it. I personally wanted a hard hitting, highly accurate rifle for 600 yards and under.

For this, after playing with all of those above rifles (any many others) again I settled on the POF.

With all of that said, with your budget and what I'm hearing you say I would echo the others and say look into a DPMS .308 like the one I pictured first.

This is just one man's opinion though. So take it for what you will.

Also, the pictures above are not posted to brag, just to show that I have personally owned and operated the weapon systems you have been thinking about or recommended in this thread.

kodiak61 · Feb 21, 2012

To answer some of your other questions,

I believe CMMG makes a left had ejection .308 upper. You might also look into STAG arms, I dont know if they make one but they do make them in the 5.56 format so I would think that they might.

The lower of course you can make "AMBI" for the most part, POF's, Hogan's and some others are truly ambi on the lower.

American Spirit arms makes a charging handle version AR10 that I think it pretty interesting. I have had some dealings with the "new" ASA and think they make a nice product.

tripleshotsplease · Feb 21, 2012

Kodiak,

Wow, just wow! lol can we be best friends? talk about a 308 maniac

Thank you for the intel, i have been lookin at the cmmg's this morning. seems like a good start.

mjbskwim · Feb 21, 2012

Kodiak,what was your opinion of the FN FAR? My friend's was very accurate.

kodiak61 · Feb 21, 2012

I think the FN FNAR is a great weapon system. It is a modernized Browning BAR and my personal rifle was a tack driver (with my shooting abilities, I'm sure some of the Bob Lee Swagger types that have a hogs tooth and Sniper tattooed somewhere on there body would disagree).

It was fairly lightweight compared to other rifles of the platform and I had the "heavy" model.

My MAJOR complaint was proprietary magazines. And at the time I owned that weapon the magazines were hard to find and close to $80 EACH when you could find them. This was right after the Obama election and of course they may have come down since in price since that time.

I am one of the weirdo's that has to have 10 magazines (minimum) for every weapon system so this was quite annoying.

Service of the rifle was not all that difficult, I never needed to send it back for any reason so customer service was not an issue. I have heard mixed reviews on FN's CS but have no personal experience in dealing with them. And that is a good thing I suppose because every FN product I personally have owned worked as it was supposed too.

Lack of upgrades and rail system was sort of frustrating. So I whipped out my miniscule skills and modded in some magpul rails so I could mount the grip.

The recoil was on par with an M1A in my opinion, which is saying something considering there is no muzzle break on the FNAR. One of the things I had planned was to have the barrel cut down and threaded to take a Vortex flash hider. I love those things by the way. Side note, nothing more detrimental to personal safety at night then being seen. The Vortex simply works. When ambushed the first thing you look for is the "flash" of whats shooting at you, sometimes you can not identify the target and simply just fire in the direction of the "flash". Some will argue the first thing you do is take cover, my personal choice is find whats shooting at you and make it stop. Maybe the happy medium is simultaneously doing both, while diving for cover keep the presence of mind to look for the flickering ball of light that wants to kill you. I guess that's another topic for another day in another section of this forum. Long story short I approve of Vortex flash hiders.

I was never able to buy spare parts, this too may have changed in recent times as the rifle has been out sometime. I obsess over spare parts, so this too was another reason why I sold the weapon.

It really breaks down to why your buying it. If you have "WOLVERINES" spray painted in your mind somewhere under the tinfoil hat then I wouldn't buy it for the above reasons already mentioned. Parts, magazines and rarity don't make the FNAR a quality SHTF weapon system. And none of that has anything to do with the quality of the weapon. Does that make sense?

Love or hate the AR platform, they are everywhere, parts, tools,magazines and all sorts of goodies are available for them. And will be available in good times and in bad more-so then any other weapon system in my opinion.

You could start with a basic DPMS .308 and upgrade it and truly change the entire weapon in the future as budget allowed. Heck you could even buy a gas piston kit or upper at some point and have your battle weapon and long range weapon with the push of 2 pins. And this of course implies you give a crap about gas piston.

This is my plan. Not saying its for everyone, but what I'm going with. I have the POF 14.5 with pinned break currently. Its set up with all the goodies I want and now that they are paid for I'm saving for the POF 24" upper and then a quality optic to top it. That way I have a battle rifle and can lug the 24" upper in my ruck or in the vehicle. When the situation presents itself that I would want to take a shot from beyond 500-600 then I could trade uppers and try my luck. This could be done rapidly if forced I suppose, but again most targets outside of 500-600 I believe I could hide from. Hypothetically if Patrick Swayze sent me out to perform recon in an established or hasty OP I could at that time use the 24" upper to perform that task to the best of my abilities.

This concludes my long winded diatribe for now.